Not so pink Battenburg

I will start this post by saying that me and marzipan do not get on as well as I hoped we would.

I love battenburg, it's a lovely little treat with a cup of tea on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I have always bought Mr Kipplings Battenburg, often buying the mini ones too. I had high expectations for this bake as both me and the other half love it so much.

I used Mary Berry's recipe from 100 cakes and bakes and also looked to The Great British Bake Off book for handy tips too (something Mary Berry's book often lacks).

I went out and purposely bought some baking parchment so I could utilise it's stiffness in creating a divide in my tin. I bought the roll out Marzipan and some red food dye...

All was going well, I had measured out my mixture using a set of scales to ensure that exactly half was in each side, and started to drop in the red food dye to one half. This is when it first started to go wrong. It didn't seem to be going very red, it definitely said 'red food colouring' on the side of my morrisons own pot, but it just seemed to be going brown fearing that the mixture was becoming too wet I left it and thought maybe the colour will come out once it's baked...

I waited with baited breath and when the timer went I lifted it out of the oven and let it cool.

When it came to tipping it out of the tin I could tell that no way in hell was this going to be pink. Never mind I thought, it doesn't have to pink I shall just continue.

I trimmed down my cake and cut it in to four pieces... not as easy as it sounds, my cake began to break a little here and there as I handled it, the spreading of the jam was not helping either.

Then came the worst part. The marzipan. I have worked very little with marzipan so forgive my ameteurness. I sprinkled some flour down on my surface and started to roll it out. It started to stick to my rolling pin, so I sprinkled some flour on there too. I continued to roll. It began to stretch out and just break still sticking to my rolling pin despite copious amounts of flour been added. I got annoyed, why wont you just roll!?! I smacked it around a bit (later finding out that you need to give it a bit of knead before you start playing with it) and it seemed to get the message, I meant business. After a few tantrums it began to do what I wanted it to.

Now came the tricky part, wrapping it around the cake. This wasn't so bad, but would have been better if my cake sticks weren't breaking in half. I wrapped it up trimmed up the edges a bit and dusted the top.

For some reason after a little rest the cake pieces decided they no longer wanted to sit in a neat little square and started to stray from each other.

Here is my not so pink battenburg, and not so neat either.

I did have a piece or two but found that the mixture was quite bitty and not as Mr Kipling like as I had hoped. It may be a while until I try to make battenburg again, due to my trauma with the marzipan, but when I do I won't be using that food colouring again and I think I may have to source another recipe (Sorry Mary Berry!).