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Try our Battenberg cake then check out our victoria sponge cake, angel cake and our chocolate éclairs.

Ingredients

  • 150g self-raising flour
  • 150g golden caster sugar
  • 150g salted butter, softened plus extra for the tin
  • 3 at room temperature eggs, beaten
  • ½ heaped tsp baking powder
  • 2 unwaxed lemons, zested
  • 2 oranges, zested
  • orange food colouring gel
  • yellow food colouring gel

ICING

  • 70g salted butter, softened
  • 180g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
  • 3 sprigs thyme, leaves stripped and finely chopped
  • 1 unwaxed lemon, ½ zested and 1½ tsp of juice
  • 1 orange, zested and 1½ tsp of juice
  • 300g white marzipan

Method

  • STEP 1

    Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4 and butter the sides and bottom of a 20cm square tin. Cut a 20cm × 40cm piece of baking parchment and the same of foil. Butter the foil and then put the baking parchment on top so that they’re stuck together.

  • STEP 2

    With the foil-side facing up, fold in half widthways like a book, then open out, turn over and push up the centre fold to make a 4cm pleat, that sticks up, down the centre.

  • STEP 3

    Line the base of the tin with the foil-side down, ensuring the pleat is uppermost and is dead in the centre of the tin, to create 2 identical rectangles within the tin. Ensure the paper-lined foil is pushed into all the corners of the tin with a slight overhang on either side.

  • STEP 4

    Put the flour, sugar, butter, eggs and baking powder in a bowl and whisk until just combined. Divide the mixture between two bowls. Whisk the lemon zest into one plus enough colouring to make a strong custard colour. To the other, add the orange zest and enough colouring to make quite a bright orange colour.

  • STEP 5

    Spoon each mixture into seperate halves of the tin. Make sure the divider is straight before smoothing the surface of each.

  • STEP 6

    Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until the cakes have risen and are springy to the touch. Allow to cool for a few minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack and removing the divider.

  • STEP 7

    Meanwhile, make the icing by beating together the butter, icing sugar, thyme, zest and juice until fluffy and smooth.

  • STEP 8

    Trim the brown off long edges of the cakes and then cut each cake into 3 lengthways, ensuring all 6 strips are the same size and shape so that the cross section of each is a square.

  • STEP 9

    Put a lemon, orange and then another lemon strip next to each other and use the icing to stick them together. Spread some more icing over the top and then stick the 3 remaining strips on top, alternating them in a chequerboard effect icing in-between them and on top.

  • STEP 10

    Roll the marzipan out, on a clean worksurface dusted lightly with icing sugar, to a rectangle 20cm × 30cm or the same length as the cake and 4 times its width with a little extra to trim away.

  • STEP 11

    Invert the cake onto the marzipan, iced-side down and 2cm in from the edge. Spread the remaining icing over the rest of the cake, apart from the chequerboard ends.

  • STEP 12

    Carefully roll up the cake in the marzipan and seal where the marzipan joins. Trim any ends off to neaten.

  • STEP 13

    Put the cake, seal-side down on a plate. Crimp the two top edges and score a diamond pattern on the top using the back of a knife before serving.

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