I'm just glued to The Great British Bakeoff. Mary Berry is one of my very favourite cookery writers and my Mum and I have been using her recipes for donkeys' years. Last year the programme sent me into a Victoria Sandwich Overdrive, and when I saw the Battenberg technical challenge on week one of this series, the metaphorical gauntlet was thrown. I found Mary's Coffee and Walnut version online and set about recreating it.
I have one of those cake tins that you can divide in about a million different ways but set it up to do two 2 x 12 inch rectangles that I could cut in half. I had an enormous bag of pecans so substituted these for the walnuts. I have to say that I felt they improved the taste. The coffee sponge, as you can see, was very dark and flavoured with a very strong espresso. The cakes are sandwiched together with espresso buttercream. The marzipan is Regalmarz, I find this rolls out so much more smoothly and evenly than the own-brand stuff you buy in the supermarket for very little extra cost. The cake is finished off with crimpers and a marzipan rose. All in all I am very pleased with how the cake turned out, apart from a slight mishap with one of the coffee sponges where a bit came off the side when removing it from the tin.
You can find Mary's recipe here. Warning ! Once you have one slice, you won't be able to stop !!!
2 comments:
This is much prettier than any of the ones on GBBO!
Where did you get your cake tin from? I did try to make one after the programme but it went a little (ahem!!!) bit wrong ( a catastrophe is more like it).
Hi Kathryn,
I have a big 12" square tin with several inserts so I used it as 4 long rectangles. I find it absolutely invaluable. And thankyou for your kind comment :) http://www.lakeland.co.uk/10972/Silverwood-Multisize-Foldaway-Cake-Pan
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