CAKE IN THE HOUSE

A right royal* retro treat for street parties and home scoffing alike.

BATTENBERG CAKE Serves 6

125g butter, softened

125g caster sugar

2 eggs

½ tsp almond extract

100g self-raising flour

50g ground almonds

2 tbsp milk

Red food colouring (this uses Dr Oetker’s gel food colouring, nearly the whole tube)

Pinch of salt

100g apricot jam

350g marzipan

Icing sugar, for dusting

1 Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Using a triple layer of foil, make a barrier down the centre of a 20cm square tin, then line each compartment with two pieces of baking paper.

2 To make the sponge, cream the butter then whisk in the sugar a couple of tablespoons at a time.

3 Whisk the eggs and add the almond extract. Gradually beat this into the butter mixture.

4 Sift the flour, salt and ground almonds into the bowl. Finally, add the milk and carefully fold everything together with a metal spoon. Measure half the mixture and place that into another bowl. Add the food colouring a drop at a time into one of the bowls until you get a really vibrant pink batter. Carefully spoon the uncoloured mixture into one half of the tin and level the top, then spoon the pink portion into the other half and do the same. Bake for 20 to 25 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool for a couple of minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

5 Cut each sponge in half lengthways, so that you end up with two pink and two yellow strips.

6 Warm the apricot jam in a saucepan with a tablespoon of water, then press it through a sieve. Take a pink cake strip and brush one side with the jam. Place a yellow piece next to it, jam sides facing, and push the two gently together. Brush the top surface with jam and place a piece of yellow cake atop the pink piece and vice versa with the yellow. Brush all the outside edges with yet more jam glaze.

7 On a surface dusted with icing sugar, knead, then roll out your marzipan into a 30cm x 20cm rectangle, large enough to wrap the cake.

8 Roll the cakes tightly in the marzipan, gently smoothing the marzipan with your hands to neaten it. Turn the cake back over with the seam underneath, trim a slice off each end and serve.

Taken from The Hebridean Baker: My Scottish Island Kitchen by Coinneach Macleod (Black and White Publishing). Photography: Susie Lowe