This is one of my favourite cakes from the UK. With the combination of cake and marzipan, what is there not to love? This cake is always ready for a photo shoot!
Ingredients:
- 1 cup All purpose (self raising) flour, sifted
- 1 cup Granulated Sugar
- 1/2 cup Ground almonds
- 1/2 teaspoon Baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon Salt
- 3/4 cup Unsalted butter at room temperature
- 3 Large eggs at room temperature
- 2 tablespoons Milk
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract
- Red food colouring
- 3/4 cup Apricot jam
- Marzipan (Home-Made Marzipan / Almond Paste is best of course!)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4.
Grease 2 loaf pans that have a base measurement of about 8" x 4" (20cm x 10cm) or you can use an 8" x 8" (20cm x 20cm) tin, but you'll need to make a divider in it if you do.
Line the pans with parchment paper.
Place the flour, sugar, ground almonds, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl and stir.
Add the butter to the bowl and mix until the mixture has a crumbly texture.
Whisk the eggs, milk and vaniulla together in a separate bowl, and then add to the dry ingredients. Mix together for two minutes.
Divide the batter into halves. Put one half into one of the prepared pans.
Add 4 drops of red food colouring to the remaining batter and mix. Add a drop at a time until you get your desired pink colour. Put this mixture into the other pan.
Bake the cakes for 30 minutes in the middle of the oven, until a tester inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. I use an unflavoured toothpick for this.
Cool the cakes in the pans.
Assembly:
Trim away the outside edges of each cake.
Slice each cake down the middle into 2 long strips.
Trim each strip so that it is neat and the brown bottom is trimmed away.
Add a little water to the apricot jam to soften it and remove any lumps.
Put a pink and yellow strip together with jam in the middle to hold them together.
Put a thin layer of jam on top of the two pieces of cake.
Put the other two pieces of cake on top, the other way around, so that you get a checkerboard effect when you look at the end.
Roll out the marzipan until itès big enough to wrap around the whole cake. It'll probably be roughly 8" x 16".
Spread apricot jam on the top and sides of the cake.
Carefully put the marzipan on top of the cake and wrap it all the way round. Don't wrap the ends.
Trim the marzipan and your cake is ready to enjoy!
