Tea anyone? Battenberg as well....

Hmmm, I am sure Battenberg is part of High tea.

NZ Battenberg

I LOVE high tea….

Lovely bone china, cucumber sammies, delicate pastries, little wee cakes…

It reminds me of playing houses when I was little:)

My wonderful friend in England, sent me a few packets of colored marzipan as getting marzipan here at times is like finding someone who doesn’t think they should be on Masterchef. Mission impossible!!

A little garish in the coloring department and I have some bright pink too…But who can look a gift horse in the mouth?? Not I!!!

Supermarkets sell that hideous white/ yellow (supposedly almond) icing and try to say its marzipan but it truly isn’t.

If they knew and tasted real marzipan, no way is it comparable to that yucky yuck yuck wedding cake icing stuff……..Blurgh!! And to think I used to eat it as a kid???

Beautiful…

Do not even get me started with almond paste…………….

 I decided to make Battenberg BUT I had planned to make it black and white, for NZ of course.

But I had no apricot jam and I didn’t want jammy red bits bleeding through onto white spongey so I made it red and black…

Make sense????

ARE YOU READY TO GET GREEDY>???????

You will need….

1 & 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

½ cup ground almonds

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup caster sugar

 125g  unsalted butter, softened

3 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

red food coloring

black food coloring

⅓ cup  apricot jam or raspberry like me

200-250g marzipan.

Got it all???

Red sponge

And the black….

Half and Half

Baked and Cooling

Sizing it all up

The off cuts…Good for trifle or greedyboys:)

What do we need to do??

Heat oven to 175 Celsius.

Grease and line a rectangle baking tin. I used a big square but that worked.

You need to also make sure you make a small divider to place in the middle of the baking tin. I used baking paper and folded it over a few times. You can also use tinfoil.

Beat butter and sugar until creamy.

Add in eggs, one and a time and add in Vanilla essence.

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl and add to wet mix, one cup at a time.

Take care though not to over mix.

It’s not a sponge mix but similar so we don’t want to over work it.

When combined , place half the mix into another bowl.

Make one mix red and one mix black.

Usually a few drops of coloring is enough, with the black though, you need a little more.

Pour into the tin with the separated half (as above photo shows).

Place in oven and bake for 25 minutes and then remove from the oven.

Leave in tin and allow to coo for 15-20 minutes, then remove it and place on baking tray, allowing to cool completely.

Sort of like a puzzle

Stack em high!!

Double Checking

Make it Jammy

Marzipan….

Roll it, Roll it, Rolling!!

Roll it, Roll it, Wrap it!!

What else am i doing, now its cold???

Roll out your marzipan,I use 2 sheets of baking paper so there is no stickiness etc.I will usually measure how long the cake is and how wide I need and then allow 1 cm each side.

I placed the spongey cakes on top of each other and trimmed around and also at the front ends.

Slightly warm the jam and then brush all over the spongey cake and place it together.

Place completed cake on top of the rolled out marzipan (as above).

You want to wrap the marzipan round, so snug but not too tight so it buckles.

Slightly brush edge of marzipan you will be joining with jam and seal together.

Make sure your sealed edge is underneath the cake or at least right on a bottom edge:)

It’s a good idea to allow the marzipan time to dry, a few hours at least before slicing.

But you can if very greedy, like myself, slice it beforehand but it will be soft, so make sure knife is sharp!!

I like to slice a little off each end so it looks better as the end bits can still look a bit ragged at times.

When its ready, get your china out, have a slice and……

ENJOY, ENJOY, ENJOY!!!!

Tomorrow…..something choccy!!

It’s a wrap

Wrapped up

A slice perhaps??

Mmmmmm

Another Slice???

Enjoy!!

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