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Battenburg
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
So, here it is.
Not a cheap cake because of the marzipan, but not as if you're going to make it every day.
Don't think i'm patronising but i'll explain things fully in case someone's reading who's not sure on something
you will need for the cake:
8oz self raising flour
8oz very soft butter
8oz caster sugar
4 mediumish eggs at room temperature
rounded teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of almond extract (optional)
red food colouring
for the covering:
2 x 1lb/450g packets of almond paste at room temperature
12oz (about 2 thirds) of a jar of apricot jam, could use raspberry but must be seedless.
icing sugar for dusting
a large swiss roll tin, mine's 9.5" x 12.5". I've got a big swiss roll tin too
greasproof/baking parchment
a little flavourless oil, vegetable/sunflower
so, lining the tin.
cut a piece of greeseproof about 2-2.5 times the width of the tin
fold it in half, make a hard crease in the middle, then pull back one half until you have about 3" left underneath from the crease. press down and make a hard crease
turn it over and do the same on the other side. you should now have a vertical pleat in your paper
Grease the inside of the pleat and press down firmly, then grease the tin. press the paper in firmly, smoothing out any air bubbles with the pleat down the centre of the tin
trim the edges of, cut the pleat down if it seems to high. dont worry about the top and bottom sides not being lined, you'll be trimming the cake so it doesn't matter.
Get all your cakey ingredients ready
sift the flour twice with the baking powder (all in one recipe so you want a lot of air in there). beat the eggs with the almond extract and put everything (except the food colouring) into a big bowl. Beat thoroughly for 3-4 minutes. you want a 'soft dropping' consistency. that is, if you take a spoon of mixture, tap the spoon on the bowl it'll plop off in one go. if the mixture's a bit stiff beat in a little milk.
split the mixture in half. put one half in one side of the tin, add a few drops of red food colouring to the other half so you get a nice pink colour then put this in the other half. if you cut your pleat down and it's opening, a little cake mixture keeps it together.
smooth out the mixtures and press to the edges
bake for 20-25 minutes at 180c until a knife/cocktail stick, when put in the cake, comes out clean.
leave in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack and leave until cold.
Not a cheap cake because of the marzipan, but not as if you're going to make it every day.
Don't think i'm patronising but i'll explain things fully in case someone's reading who's not sure on something
you will need for the cake:
8oz self raising flour
8oz very soft butter
8oz caster sugar
4 mediumish eggs at room temperature
rounded teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of almond extract (optional)
red food colouring
for the covering:
2 x 1lb/450g packets of almond paste at room temperature
12oz (about 2 thirds) of a jar of apricot jam, could use raspberry but must be seedless.
icing sugar for dusting
a large swiss roll tin, mine's 9.5" x 12.5". I've got a big swiss roll tin too
greasproof/baking parchment
a little flavourless oil, vegetable/sunflower
so, lining the tin.
cut a piece of greeseproof about 2-2.5 times the width of the tin
fold it in half, make a hard crease in the middle, then pull back one half until you have about 3" left underneath from the crease. press down and make a hard crease
turn it over and do the same on the other side. you should now have a vertical pleat in your paper
Grease the inside of the pleat and press down firmly, then grease the tin. press the paper in firmly, smoothing out any air bubbles with the pleat down the centre of the tin
trim the edges of, cut the pleat down if it seems to high. dont worry about the top and bottom sides not being lined, you'll be trimming the cake so it doesn't matter.
Get all your cakey ingredients ready
sift the flour twice with the baking powder (all in one recipe so you want a lot of air in there). beat the eggs with the almond extract and put everything (except the food colouring) into a big bowl. Beat thoroughly for 3-4 minutes. you want a 'soft dropping' consistency. that is, if you take a spoon of mixture, tap the spoon on the bowl it'll plop off in one go. if the mixture's a bit stiff beat in a little milk.
split the mixture in half. put one half in one side of the tin, add a few drops of red food colouring to the other half so you get a nice pink colour then put this in the other half. if you cut your pleat down and it's opening, a little cake mixture keeps it together.
smooth out the mixtures and press to the edges
bake for 20-25 minutes at 180c until a knife/cocktail stick, when put in the cake, comes out clean.
leave in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack and leave until cold.
0
Comments
because you can only have 10 images, here's part 2
so picking up, you now have 2 cakes cooling on a wire rack
Now, follow this carefully. Trim the sides of both cakes that were touching the tin, so that's top, bottom and side but not the bit that was touching the pleat in the middle.
Look at thy cake, one's usually bigger than the other, so put the smaller one on top of the larger one and line up the top left corners. You will then see under the small cake, how much of the bigger cake you need to cut off. So trim the cake, and the sides that were touching the pleat.
Now place the cake side by side and check the height. If one's taller than the other, trim it so they're the same height. Put them back on top of each and cut, vertically in half. So you will now have 2 giant yellow and 2 giant pink sponge fingers
Put the jam in a saucepan, and bring it to boiling point with out burning. Pass through a metal seive into another saucepan so you get runny, lump free jam.
Put one pink finger on a work surface and stick it (liberally using the jam) to a yellow finger. Cover the top of these 2 fingers generously with jam. Then put the remaining yellow finger on top of the pink finger, jam the side then put the remaining pink finger next to in and stick them together. so you should now have
notice the off cuts to have with a cuppa for all your good efforts
knead the two blocks of almond paste together on a work surface dusted with icing sugar. measure your cake carefully. then roll out the almond paste. you want it about 3" longer than the cake and about 6" more round. so say your cake is 9" long and 12" round you want to roll out your paste so it's 12"x 18". I made mine a bit bigger as i was folding the ends over to seal it like a present, as Leigh was taking it to wotk the next day. keep dusting with icing sugar regularly and moving the paste or it'll stick then rip when you try to pick it up. if it does, just roll it out again.
Cut one long side of the paste to tidy it up and liberally coat the almond paste with the rest of the jam. Place the cake on the cut side and press down, roll the cake and press down. do this twice more so your cake is covered making sure you firmly press to stick the paste to the cake. Trim off the excess paste and the ends and eat before Fiend_85 comes home
XxX
I don't think you'd like it.
Washing up gets done by me or Leigh. Toilet seat's always down. No pubes in the loo, sink or bath. Washing and drying done regularly. Home cooked meal everynight, puddings at the weekend and a cake usually on Sunday
I don't think you're used to that
I'm not, but I'm very adaptable :P
I'm considering trying it for the Big Gay Band cake sale but I'm not very confident.