GBBO Bake Along 2020 – Autumnal Battenberg Cake

Bake off is back!

It’s certainly what 2020 needs and I’m soooooo happy!

We have both the usual judges; Paul and Prue, along with Noel returning as a host, along a new second host; Matt Lucas!

The first week was Cake Week – where we saw the bakers challenged to create a Battenberg for the signature round, Pineapple Upside Down cakes for the Technical and a Bust cake for the Showstopper!

I was biased between creating a bake from the Signature or Technical for my first bake along post! But decided to go with the Battenberg; as I had all the ingredients in stock and had an idea to create something Autumnal, featuring warm colours and cute pumpkin decorations; to create this beautiful, seasonal version of a classic British Bake!

To make this, you will need:

Ingredients:
For the cake:
200g Butter or Baking Spread (I used Asda Best For Baking)
200g Caster Sugar
4 large Free Range Eggs
200g Self Raising Flour
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
Concentrated Orange food colouring gel

For the filling and decoration:
175g Apricot Jam
Small amount of buttercream (I used cake cream buttercream)
450g Golden Marzipan
Icing Sugar for dusting your work surface
250g fondant icing, coloured orange, yellow and brown
Edible glue or piping gel

Method:
1. Preheat your oven to 160°C/325°F/Gas Mark 3
2. Line an 8 inch square tin with a layer of foil covered with a layer of baking paper or, if you can get hold of it, Bacofoil – foil lined baking paper! Fold a crease about 2 inches tall in the centre of the paper, to form a barrier. This will keep the 2 different coloured sponges from merging together whilst baking.

3. Make the sponge by mixing the butter and caster sugar in a free-standing mixer or large bowl with an electric hand whisk, until light and fluffy.

4. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition.

5. Gently whisk in the self raising flour until fully incorporated.

6. Split the batter in half (I weighed out using my scales to achieve the exact same weight of each) and gently stir orange food colouring into one half of the batter until a light orange shade is achieved.

7. Pour the orange batter into one half of the tin, and the uncoloured batter into the other half.

8. Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave it to cool in the tin, then remove from the tin and place on a cooling rack to cool completely.

9. Trim the top crusts off both colours of cake using a cake leveller and then cut into long rectangular strips.

10. Warm the apricot jam in a small saucepan over a low heat and use an off set spatula to spread on the 4 sides of cake that will be joined together.

11. Spread the buttercream on the same 4 sides of cake; then join them together.

12. Dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out the marzipan until it’s big enough to wrap around the cake.

13. Apply some apricot jam to the sides of the cake, then place the cake close to the edge of the marzipan. Roll the cake and marzipan together, until all sides of the cake are covered in the marzipan.

14. Use a pizza cutter or a knife to cut away the excess marzipan and seal the seam with a little water.

15. Trim the ends of the cake so the rest of the excess marzipan is removed and reveal the chequerboard pattern.

16. Use a fluffy cake decorating brush to brush off any icing sugar.

17. Make the pumpkin decorations by rolling out small balls of the orange and yellow fondant icing and use sugar modelling tools to create the lines of the pumpkins and push little holes in the tops.

18. Make the pumpkin stalks with the brown fondant icing and brush a little edible glue in the holes, before inserting the stalks.

19. Add a little edible glue to the bottoms of the fondant pumpkins and arrange on the top of the Battenberg cake.

Serve and enjoy!

This can be stored in an airtight container in a cool, dry place and consumed within 3 days.

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