Battenberg or How I Came to Make Marzipan

YUM. And so pretty, am I right?

Took the month of June off from the Daring Bakers, mostly because I was too busy to bother, and when I logged in last week and saw what I missed, I knew I had to immediately correct my course.

Back. On. Course.

Blog checking lines: Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge!  She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

marzipan ball. see the white stuff? that's powdered sugar!

Mostly because this recipe allowed me to make my own marzipan. (You can too! Click here.)

I thought--gee, you can make that? And then immediately felt stupid because, yes, you can make almost all the things you can also buy prepared. Some--like butter--are probably more work than they're worth. Marzipan? I was willing to find out.

marzipan: rolled out and ready

It's worth it, folks. At least, if you're me, and you have half a bag of almond flour sitting around the house left over from this delicious dare, and you gaze longingly at the marzipan in the baking isle every time you're at the grocery store but refuse to drop $8 to buy it.

A little bain-marie, a little whisking, and you've got marzipan! (And the dogs each get an egg yolk. Dog score!)

I also must admit, my favorite part of this process was the kneading-it-like-bread-dough process, for which you use POWDERED SUGAR instead of flour! How great is that!?!? You can actually lick your hands clean when you're done.

But back to the challenge: the Battenberg. A cake with a checked pattern, for which there are special pans you can buy that feature four segments. For the purposes of this challenge, I did not buy a new special pan. Instead I ghetto-rigged a non special pan with tin foil, like so:

Tin foil. Not just for leftovers.

The first Battenberg cake was made to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Victoria, to her Prince Louis of Battenburg. The checkered yellow and pink squares symbolize the four princes of Battenberg. How quaint, yes?

ready for the oven. sorry for the blur.

The cake is flavored with almond, which is to say, it has ground up almonds in it, which makes the cake quite toothsome and delicious. It's a simple sponge cake that's assembled and glued together using apricot jam and then the whole thing is covered in marzipan--more almonds. 

Out of the oven. Brown and smelling amazing.

For those of you following along at home, you know that almonds are my favorite of all the baking nuts and flavors. 

Trimming. See the edges in the background? You get to eat these as you go!

YUM. 

freshly rolled in marzipan

I will admit that I didn't do the best job of trimming and lining everything up. My top left pink strip was horribly thin on one end, but after trimming awhile, I just didn't want my little cake to get any littler. 

criss-crossy lines added per instructions

Also, the marzipan wasn't as sticky as I wanted it to be when assembling. Maybe I should have used more apricot jam. Maybe I should have made my marzipan oilier--which is to say, used more egg white.

The middle was more straight than the ends.

Also, when I look at everyone else's Battenbergs, it appears I was supposed to cut off all the brown edges from the tops and bottoms of the sponge as well, so as not to conflict with the pale yellow and pink of the pattern. But hey, if I had done that, the cake would be so tiny it would have been sad

No matter. The cake was incredible. The sponge, as I mentioned before, is quite toothsome and it stands up beautifully to the marzipan. The whole thing is made even more elegant by the thin strips of jelly between everything, soft and sweet.  So. Good.

There's rice in my bread

And it's delicious. (<----the link for the recipe is there.)

This month's daring bakers challenge was to make Dutch Crunch Bread...which is to say, make some bread and add a yeasted, rice-flour based topping to the bread that rises and cooks into a crunchy topping worthy of your tongue's time. In Dutch it's called Tigjerbrood, or "tiger bread" after the tiger-like shell on the bread after baking. It's apparently often used in sandwich rolls, and I do recommend you try making it.

Blog checking lines: Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!*

see the rice? awesome.

In the meantime, I noticed that besides the soft white sandwhich roll-type bread recipe offered by the challenge, there was also a recipe that had...cooked brown rice IN the bread. Awesome, says me, I have some cooked brown rice IN my fridge. It's fate.

The bread was divine to knead. Have you ever kneaded bread dough with rice in it? It's luxiourious. All pebbly and soft in your fingers. Do it. Trust me.

So, you mix and knead, and rise and then lop the dough in half and put it into two bread loaf pans. Check, check, and check.

Let the loaf pan penned dough rise again. Check.

this is the topping, already rising in the orange bowl.

Then you mix up the tiger topping. Check.

oh. crap.

Then you put the tiger topping on top of the loaves and let IT rise. 

Oh. 

Crap. 

This is exactly the point at which you think...hmmm...that's not going to work. 

So you re-check the recipe and see that the baking lawyers have 9x5 inch loaf pans and you...don't.

It's cool. I wanted to clean up this frothy science experiment mess.

It's cool. I mean, you're sweating, not only from the heat in the kitchen but from the thought of all that mess and crazy in your oven.

Deep breath.

Put some foil on a cooking sheet and put the sheet below the loaf pans.

It's going to be okay.  Crazy, but totally okay.

Crunch crunch crunch went the tiger...

The bread came out crunchy. A little overflowing with crunch.

 overflowing with crunchy goodness! 

But it was sweet and had a lovely crumb underneath all that crunch.

bread.

It was especially good toasted. With butter.

nubbly rice texture. yum.

* Yeah, I didn't make a sandwich with mine. I didn't even notice that I was supposed to until I read those lines while posting this. The bread is long gone, folks, and there were no sandwiches. Daring Baker Fail.

And then the dogs were wearing sombreros

tiny, dog-sized sombreros.

yep. this actually happened.