Battenberg Cake

Cut through the smooth marzipan coat and a chequerboard of pink and pale yellow appears. Battenberg cake is a British teatime cake in which sponges of two colours are joined with jam, assembled into a long rectangular bar and wrapped in marzipan. Today the most common form has four sections in two rows of two, but old recipes (ingredient proportions and methods) include examples with 9 or 25 sections. It is a cake whose pattern is created by trimming and assembling the sponge after baking.

Baking Two Colours of Batter, Then Cooling and Cutting

Butter and sugar are creamed together, eggs are added a little at a time, and flour and ground almonds are combined. The batter is divided into two equal portions by weight, and only one is coloured pink. Because the same mixture is divided, a different colour does not necessarily mean a different flavour. Baking both with an even texture and rise makes it easier to cut them to the same dimensions and fit them together later.

Besides using a dedicated tin with four long, narrow compartments, there is also a method of making a divider in the centre of a square tin with paper and foil and baking the two colours side by side. The freshly baked sponge is still fragile, so it is handled only after it has cooled. If the two colours have each been baked as a single sheet, each sheet is cut lengthwise in half, giving four sponge bars in total.

Joining the Sponges with Jam to Make a Chequerboard

The browned edges and domed tops are trimmed off, and each bar is evened to the same thickness. If the cross-section of each bar is square, the outside of the four assembled bars is also square. If the dimensions differ, a gap may form in the centre or a ridge may appear beneath the marzipan. Cutting the sponges to the same thickness also keeps the chequerboard neat.

Apricot jam, warmed until smooth, is spread thinly on the surfaces that touch, and the bars are stacked so that different colours sit next to each other above, below and on either side. The jam adds the sweet-sour taste of fruit and also holds the sponges together.

Hiding the Marzipan Seam Underneath

The marzipan is rolled out into a rectangle. Jam is also spread on the outside of the assembled sponge, which is then wrapped in the marzipan. The seam is turned to the underside, and the marzipan is smoothed on so as to press out the air before the ends are trimmed neatly. Some finishes add a shallow lattice on the top or crimp the edges as decoration.

The almond coat on the outside is denser and sweeter than the baked sponge inside, with a thin layer of jam between them. Soft sponge, a layer of fruit and a coat of almond paste all fit into a single slice. It is a cake served cut into small slices at British teatime.

A homemade Battenberg cake, showing the two-colour, four-section cross-section and the outer coat. Photo: SDPF1989, 2022-05-31, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Original size, no additional processing.

1898: Nine-Section and Four-Section Versions Side by Side

Frederick Vine’s “Saleable Shop Goods” (1898) includes a Battenburg cake divided into nine sections, with red and white placed alternately.

A nine-section Gâteau à la Domino also appeared in Agnes Marshall’s magazine “The Table” on 2 July of the same year.

Robert Wells’s Neapolitan Roll from the same year is divided into four, but its outside is coated with pink desiccated coconut rather than marzipan. Later trade diagrams also show 25 sections. Cakes assembled from alternating colours were made under different names, with different numbers of sections and different coatings.

A Legend Linking It to a Royal Wedding

There is also a legend that it was created to celebrate the 1884 wedding of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter Victoria of Hesse and Prince Louis of Battenberg. The story links the four sections to four people: Louis and his brothers Alexander, Franz Joseph and Henry.

However, some early recipes have nine sections, and it is uncertain whether the four sections represented the four princes from the start. Food historian Ivan Day also points out that no contemporary record has been found to support the story of a wedding origin. The link with the wedding is a legend told to explain the origin of the name and the pattern.

Glossary