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Today I am sharing with you my attempt at Mary Berry’s Coffee and Walnut Battenberg Cake which was the technical challenge in “cake week” of the 2nd season of the Great British Bake Off. Battenberg Cake is an absolute British classic, and this coffee and walnut version of it always sounded particularly delicious! I have wanted to try making it for years and have finally got round to it!
So let me take you through the history of the Battenberg, the process of making this Coffee and Walnut version à la Mary Berry, and finally what I would change about this recipe for next time!
What is Battenberg Cake?
Battenberg Cake is an absolute classic here in the UK – it’s been around since the 19th century! It is said to have first been made in honour of the wedding between Princess Victoria (the granddaughter of Queen Victoria) to the German Prince Louis of Battenberg (the Germans who then went to the UK later changed the name Battenberg to Mountbatten to anglicise it). Fun fact – Battenberg (where the family originated from) is a town in Hesse, Germany, quite close to where I grew up. There is a lot of “unexplained” English in me, and it might be that some of my German ancestors actually came from England to Battenberg/the state of Hesse and that that’s where the English roots come from… Who knows?!
The traditional Battenberg is made with strips of sponge cake, half of which are kept plain and the other coloured pink, and then stuck together with apricot jam to make a 2×2 checkerboard design once you cut into it. The cake is then wrapped in a thin layer of Marzipan and scored to decorate. Nowadays, the Battenberg cake comes in all kinds of flavour and colour combinations, and this Coffee and Walnut version is the perfect example. Some recipes (like this one) now use buttercream to stick the cake together, and you could also use fondant to decorate the outside of the cake if you don’t like marzipan!
How to make this Coffee and Walnut Battenberg Cake
First of all, you need to prepare your baking tin by folding the baking paper in a way that will create a pleat in the middle of your tin, allowing you to bake the coffee and walnut and the vanilla sponge separately.
The sponge mix follows an easy all-in-one method. This does what it says in the tin – combine all the ingredients at once and you are done! Hence why the recipe contains a little extra baking powder alongside the self-raising flour, as no additional air is incorporated into the mix by whisked eggs or creaming the butter and sugar. The batter is then divided into two portions, with one flavoured with some vanilla extract, whilst the other is flavoured with coffee and chopped walnuts before baking.
Once baked, the cake is cut into four equal strips and then assembled to form a checkerboard design (it’s impressive, but not quite as impressive as this 4-tier Checkerboard Hidden Design Cake). The below recipe uses a coffee buttercream to stick the cake together, so make sure you read this baking basics post on How to make the Perfect Buttercream first to check out some of my tips!
Finally, the cake is rolled in a thin layer of marzipan and decorated with walnut halves!
What would I do differently next time?
As I have said before with these technical challenge recipes, I try to stick to the recipe when making it (since that’s the point, haha), rather than improvising and adding/removing things to/from the recipe like I normally do. Which I don’t always find easy!
If I were to make this Coffee and Walnut Battenberg cake again (which I probably will – it tasted great!), there are a few things I would do differently. In essence, I just thought the quantities for this cake were not enough! You need more cake batter so that the cake is higher. That way, you can actually cut the cake so that you end up with a cuboid that has the same height and width in order to get that perfect checkerboard effect when you slice the cake (you’ll see my checkerboard pattern is slightly “rectangular”)! Same with the buttercream, there just wasn’t enough!
Next time I make it, I will multiply all of the ingredients x1.5. Even if then it is a little too much cake (which I don’t think), that just means there are more off-cuts for you to eat! <3
Finally, for personal preference, I would have maybe added a few more chopped walnuts to the cake as well, but that’s up to you!
More Bake Off Technical Challenge Recipes
I am absolutely obsessed with the Great British Bake Off and have challenged myself to attempt all of (or at least the ones that are “realistic” – I won’t be making pitta breads on a camp fire in the back garden!) the technical challenges from the programme! I have tried quite a few already, so make sure you check out some of the other recipes to find out how I got on!
- Mary Berry’s Religieuses
- Mary Berry’s Fraisier Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Hand-raised Chicken, Bacon and Apricot Pies
- Mary Berry’s Bakewell Tart with feathered Icing
- Paul’s Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes
- Mary Berry’s Frosted Walnut Layer Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Cottage Loaf
- Mary Berry’s Homemade Jaffa Cakes
- Paul Hollywood’s Wagon Wheel Biscuits
- Mary Berry’s Victoria Sponge Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Mini Pork Pies
- Mary Berry’s Viennese Whirls
- Prue’s Vegan Chocolate and Raspberry Tarts (S2UC Special)
- Pizza Star Bread (Junior Bake Off)
- Mary Berry’s Coffee and Walnut Battenberg Cake
- Paul’s Crusty White Cob
- Paul Hollywood’s Rainbow Bagels
- Prue Leith’s Malt Loaf
- Paul’s Jammy Biscuits
- Paul Hollywood’s Olive Ciabatta Bread Sticks with Homemade Tzatziki
- Prue Leith’s Sticky Toffee Puddings with Sesame Tuiles
- Prue Leith’s Prinzregententorte
- Paul Hollywood’s Baklava (22cm)
- Paul’s Caramel Biscuit Bars (Twix)
- Prue Leith’s Vegan Sausage Rolls
- Prue’s Sablé Breton Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Sticky Belgian Buns
- Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing
- Prue’s Garibaldi Biscuits with Feathered Chocolate Icing
- Paul Hollywood’s Pain au Raisins
- Paul’s Spicy Beef Tacos
- Paul Hollywood’s S’mores
- Prue Leith’s Pistachio Praline Ice Cream Cones
- Vegetable Spring Rolls
- Prue’s Vertical Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Raspberry Tarts
- Paul Hollywood’s Devonshire Splits
Coffee and Walnut Battenberg Cake | Bake Off Technical Challenge
Recipe
Ingredients (Quantities below are from the original recipe. I would recommend multiplying by x1.5 (see recipe tips above):
FOR THE CAKE:
- 100g softened butter/margarine/baking spread
- 100g caster sugar
- 2 M eggs
- 100g self-raising flour
- 50g ground almonds
- ½ tsp baking powder
- few drops vanilla extract
- 3 tsp milk
- 1½ tsp instant coffee powder
- 25g walnuts, roughly chopped
FOR THE COFFEE BUTTERCREAM:
- 40g butter, softened/at room temperature
- 100g icing sugar
- ½ tsp instant coffee powder
- 1½ tsp milk
TO FINISH:
- 225g ready-to-roll marzipan
- Walnut halves
YOU WILL ALSO NEED:
- 20x20cm square baking tin (or a Battenberg Cake tin)
- Baking paper
- Electric hand whisk
- Small, angled palette knife
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 170°C and lightly grease a 20x20cm square baking tin. Cut a piece of baking paper to match the width of the tin (i.e. roughly 20cm) and is slightly longer than the length of the tin. Fold the paper in half widthways, then fold the paper up in the opposite direction about 5cm high away from the middle crease. You should then be able to push the middle fold up to create a 5cm high pleat. Place the baking paper into the baking tin, making sure the pleat is in the middle of the tin to divide it into two equal halves (alternatively, you can even buy baking tins especially for Battenberg cakes now!).
- In order to be accurate later, weigh your empty mixing bowl you will be making the cake batter in and take note of the weight. Place the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, ground almonds and baking powder into the mixing bowl and whisk together using an electric hand whisk until just combined (don’t overmix).
- Evenly divide the cake batter between two mixing bowls (you can calculate the amount of mix you have by weighing the entire bowl with the mix and then subtracting the weight of the bowl you determined earlier. Then simply divide that number by two and weigh it into the bowls).
- Dissolve the instant coffee powder in 1.5 tsp of milk (you may need to gently warm it in small bursts in the microwave to help the granules dissolve) and add it to one bowl alongside the chopped walnuts. Add the remaining 1.5 tsp of milk to the other bowl alongside the vanilla extract.
- Then mix the flavourings into the cake mix before transferring each mix into the two separate sections of your prepared baking tin.
- Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes until well risen, shrinking away from the sides of the tin, and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then remove from the tin and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
- Once cooled, you can make the coffee flavoured buttercream. Place the butter into a small mixing bowl and beat with the electric mixer for about 5 minutes until pale and creamy. Next, sift in about half of the icing sugar and mix. Dissolve the coffee granules in the milk as before, then add to the bowl alongside the other half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth. Set aside until needed.
- Use a sharp knife to trip the cake into four equal strips. I would level the tops of the cake and then measure their height, before cutting the cake to the same width. That way you will end up with four equal cubes in each of the sections of the checkerboard sections once sliced.
- Lay one strip of coffee and one strip of vanilla cake next to one another, then stick together using a thin layer of the buttercream. Spread a thin layer of the buttercream over the top, then set the second strip of vanilla cake over the coffee strip on the bottom layer. Spread some more buttercream onto the side of the strip before sticking on the final piece of coffee cake.
- Use a ruler to measure the circumference (i.e. measure how long the four sides are added together) and length of the cake to find out to what dimensions you need to roll the marzipan. Lightly dust your worksurface with icing sugar, then roll out the marzipan into a rectangle of the dimensions you measured earlier.
- Spread some buttercream onto to top of the cake, then place the cake onto the top part of the marzipan rectangle with the side covered in buttercream to stick. Reserve a teaspoon of the icing, then use the remaining buttercream to cover the remaining three sides of the cake, then roll it up in the marzipan to cover all four sides, which should join nicely if you measured it correctly. You may want to use a little water to help seal the join.
- Use a sharp knife to trim the sides of the cake and to reveal the checkerboard design on either side. Use your thumb and forefinger to pinch and crimp the marzipan along the top edges of the cake. Finally, use the reserved buttercream to stick a few walnut halves onto the top of the cake to decorate.
