(huffs)
(upbeat music)
- Hello everyone, hope you're well.
I've got a question for you straight off the bat, boom.
Do you do something that you don't like,
or you make something that you don't like or enjoy?
I'm trying to think of an example.
Making the bed all right, but you actually do
get enjoyment out of it 'cause you sleep in it,
so that probably doesn't work, but, no,
that doesn't make sense.
But my point is today I'm doing the first
in a series called Taste of the World
and I'm starting here in very good old England
with the Battenberg cake.
Effectively it is extremely popular here in the UK,
very retro nostalgic, checkerboard style cake.
But what I hate about it, oh man I love the cake.
I love cake, but it's wrapped in marzipan which I detest.
I hate any cake that is covered in marzipan.
My mom makes a Christmas cake each year, can't do it.
Hate it.
So this new playlist we're gonna be doing
Taste the World is something I've teased
for a little while, in fact there's a whole chapter
in my second book so we're gonna be hopping
from country to country with your suggestions
and maybe doing some Korean street food,
some French baguettes, and some Battenberg cake
which we like, don't we.
Battenberg is a light sponge cake
with the pieces covered in jam,
apricot jam actually, very nice.
The cake is covered in marzipan, eh,
and when cut in cross section displays
a distinctive two by two check pattern,
alternatively coloured pink and yellow.
The cake was named in honour of the marriage
of Prince Victoria and grand daughter Queen Victoria
to Prince Louis of Battenberg, there we go.
First Battenberg cake appeared in 1903,
so here we are over 100 years later, in digital format,
attempting to make it so I can encourage you too.
And then you take it back, and then we bring it back,
and then we're creating history.
With that royal introduction there is only one
cardboard cut out we need today.
Her majesty with of course a sombrero.
One does approve of this Battenberg.
Right get myself a mixing bowl.
We're gonna make two colour sponges,
but we're gonna do it in one mass to mix.
If you want you could divide this in two
and then dye it separately, it's up to you.
So this is some butter, sugar,
some ground almonds because the marzipan's
not gonna give us enough almonds is it.
(cries)
Six eggs, self raising flour, some baking powder.
Good drizzle of vanilla extract, and another good drizzle
of almond extract because again there's not enough
almonds in this already.
So all we've gotta do is whisk this together,
and I'm dedicating this step to the person
that commented recently that I should just get
a stand mixer.
I do have one, I just like doing it by hand.
I just wanna feel as one with the batter you know.
(gentle classical music)
That's it, that's it.
Look what daddy's doing, hey Amy huh.
Yes, so that is fairly lump free, I'm loving that.
We're gonna divide it into two now and dye it pink,
so we've got that checkerboard look.
Oh, and a little spoiler alert I'm nailing this
because very soon I'm gonna do edible chess.
Uh huh, building up.
Okay so I've divided that up, and I have got myself
some food dye paste here.
This is supposed to be hot pink,
and it's that really strong stuff where you only add
a little bit otherwise it can go bonkers.
So, oh yeah, that's getting quite pink already isn't it?
The only thing you've got to remember
with something like this is, obviously I wanna
dip it in a teeny bit more again,
that's a bit gunky you don't wanna do that.
So you're gonna need a couple of cocktail sticks,
or bamboo skewers, like what I've got.
But looking at it, this aint gonna need much at all.
Right I think that shade is fine, but all I'm gonna do now
because you can see there's a little bit of unevenness,
a spatula should be able to mix that through
a bit easier.
There you go, I actually might need a little bit more,
but you kinda get the idea.
So the next thing you'll see hopefully,
is some nice pink batter.
All right, there we go, so we've got the standard colour
there which is just yellow, although you could
dye it yellow if you wanted too.
And the pink version there, which is nice and consistent,
sort of candyfloss colour.
Now I'm not telling you to do this but if you want,
you can actually buy a Battenberg pan which has got
individual channels.
If you're gonna go wild, I love this
Battenberg recipe so much I'm gonna make loads of them
invest in one, but we're gonna just do a hack on a pan.
So we're gonna use a standard 20cm pan,
and this is genuinely true story,
I'm not sure if you guys know in the UK
a lady called Lorraine Pascal, she does a lot of baking,
I've met her four times, one time,
one time, the first time she nearly run me over, true story.
And the third time, I actually asked her
how you measure a cake tin, and she told me this.
Although you could probably Google it I guess.
So this ladies and gents is a 20cm tin,
so unless you're walking around the supermarket
buying a new tin every week with a tape measure,
which I'm sure, in fact I probably did do that
once or twice in the past.
But what you could do if you have a tape measure,
you could be standing there in the supermarket
and going, oh look, so that measurement there is 26cm
across the top because it's got a lip,
and it sort of goes out at a slight angle.
But what you wanna do, the actual measurement
is the base, so the inner lining.
From there to there, where the batter is gonna hit,
that is 20cm, and Lorraine taught me that.
All right, so the oven is being pre-heated to 160c fan.
Basically your standard temperature for most cakes,
180c and also gas mark four, thanks for that Lizzie.
All right, so there is my 20cm tin,
and I have greased and lined both the bum and the sides
of the tin.
Now this is my very high tech piece of tin foil
that I have folded in half about four times
'cause tin foils quite strong innit.
And we're gonna just sit it in to the tin like this,
and you know it's gonna just kind of sit there, isn't it?
Yeah, that's almost perfect.
So hopefully the weight of the batter should
kind of hold it together, it's quite a thick batter.
If it was thin, I'd be more worried.
I am still worried though.
I'm gonna carefully dollop this in,
as you can see it's not moving much, this is great.
It's almost like you're creating a damn,
or don't know if you remember the Barry tries recipe
where I did the eight deserts in one pan thing.
Although they were held together with biscuits,
it's a similar sort of concept.
I'm at the stage now where I'm actually really,
really, really happy with that.
I've gone half way up height wise,
half way up okay because I don't want it spilling over.
I've got a little bit of dough left to make some more
if I wanted, or some mini ones but I am really,
really happy with that.
This is gonna go in for 25 minutes.
So there's really not much else to do
other then washing up.
I've got to keep my eye on it for that amount of time,
I'm kind of thinking oh my gosh,
is one coloured side gonna be more dominant
then the other?
It shouldn't be, this is not the eight deserts in one thing,
they both weigh the same, it's just the colour.
So this really should work.
My oven is ready, and I'm on hold to someone
about a new dishwasher 'cause our other ones
broke for ages, hence the washing up always being there.
Just did a bit of washing up though, I'm a good boy.
So excuse the music because it's time to get this out.
Ah, ah, ah yeah, ow, ow, ow, ow ow.
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Sorry about that, but I am letting it cool down,
and with the left over batter right.
I had just literally enough to make two cupcakes
which are there, I'll show it to you in a bit
but I actually did a mix of the two colours,
so it should look pretty good.
All right folks, so this tin is now
sort of room temperature.
You can see I browned the top,
and for some reason the whiter sponge has actually
got a dip in it, but it's fine
because we can just level it off.
Got a wire rack here.
All right, so I'm just gonna leave this on the wire rack
to completely cool down because with doing that
it'll firm it up so we can slice it, accurately.
I'm not sure what's actually happened
but you can see the camber,
that's where it stops right there in the white cake
particularly is really low, and the cakes are cooked through
they're soft and good, and they're still cooling slightly.
The pink one's lowered a little bit,
but that's one hell of a dip in there.
So that means two things, one like always,
hopefully yours will look better then mine,
but two I might be able to just slice down here,
just before the camber starts to create
maybe slightly thinner squares.
After cutting the camber out of my pink cake,
that is what I'm left with.
So I think we'll be all right.
It's the same for this one, we'll be okay.
What I'm gonna start to do is take off the ends,
as you can see you get that really nice sort of flush
and also you get rid of the brown topping.
So you're gonna have lots of off cuts
of the cake anyway, I just have a few more then you.
(bright bouncy music)
Just turn it on it's side as well.
So that we can just trim off the brown sides.
Very gently.
(bright bouncy music)
All right so I've just cut one of these bits into two
strips, I'm really, really low on cake.
I think I might have to do this again.
But anyhow, if not it's gonna be a very, very thin
Battenberg so I can use one of the white pieces
for reference.
Give me a nice consistent size,
and you can kinda see now how that would form
our Battenberg, it actually doesn't look too bad,
blimmin' thin though.
But do you know what, I just can't,
I can't do, I can't leave it like that.
It's fine but I need to trim it more anyway,
and by the time I trim it, yeah.
It's not gonna look that great.
I think I'll leave this obviously, we can use it
but I'll make some more because we're losing
all of this, just from these cambers.
Right, long story short, (laughs),
I've just put on another one, so that's baking away.
I'm gonna give it a little bit extra,
I'm gonna give it like 35 minutes.
I've got dye on my hands, did I just rub that on my nose?
35 minutes now, I might brown the top significantly
just to make sure it's proper done, overdone,
and Lizzie's on the floor.
She's drunk.
All right, 35 minutes later, and to be honest,
I've kind of browned it.
Oh my gosh, not steamed it but.
Right, let's see what happens this time.
That's better, so I've now got, two much larger
pieces of cake, one inch wide, one inch down,
and I've cut them in a length so they're nice and flush.
Is that a cobweb?
Only just bought it, no what is that?
I don't know, this thing that holds it together,
is not the cobweb it's apricot jam.
So we warm this up, and you can pass it through a sieve
if you want, get any bits out.
I think this one's bit free, but just warm it up
in a saucepan.
So we just warm it up for two minutes or so
because of the sugar content in there it will not
take long, and just have a little look of it.
If it looks lumpy try and break it down,
but if you want to, do pass it through a sieve.
Okay, so the pan with the jam,
just keep that warm for the time being.
Get your block of marzipan.
Nice.
And you need some icing sugar as well,
we're gonna roll it out.
(bright bouncy music)
Yep cool, so all I was trying to do then
was get it wide enough so that it's as wide as a strip
but then obviously you need to bear in mind
you've got the length as well so it can go over
double the height okay.
So all I'm doing here is putting down a layer
of the apricot jam to flavour it,
and also act as glue.
Kind of sticking the sponges together,
and we'll put it between them as well.
So this is gonna be our first one,
and I'm gonna brush the sides of it here.
In fact I could probably get away with just
turning it over, and doing it like this, nice.
Stick that up like that.
Then we stick it together.
So I'm leaving a little gap here,
'cause I can trim that off in a minute.
But you can see it's stuck down,
and that is a good thing.
(bright bouncy music)
Okay so then that goes on top like that.
Make sure you do the opposites, turn that over as well
and sit it on there.
Oh wow, that looks great doesn't it.
But we're not done yet, we've gotta roll it.
So I can see already I've got way too much
but we still wanna carry on brushing
some of this marzipan to help sort of stick
it all together, and grip on to the other bits.
So what I'm gonna do is follow the line of the sponge
as best I can, and just cut off those bits
that I haven't painted.
You with me so far?
So I'm gonna bring this up okay,
over and then down, tucking that together,
nice and compact, as best I can.
And then we cut off the excess here,
I can bring this side up and just lightly pinch
the seam together, and because it's a little bit wet
from that apricot jam it will seal nice and easy.
And that is it done, (laughs).
We got there.
So I just wanna show you, mines fairly okay
on both sides, it's really flush there
'cause that's the end you concentrate on,
but if the other side is a bit loose
just get a knife and whack it straight down
but I'm really, really happy with that.
So I know it's been obviously mainly about
the Battenberg, but if you do have any leftover batter
don't throw it out or waste it.
I baked some cupcakes with it, like I say,
I mixed the two batters together,
little bit of frosting on top, if you want
you could put some balls of marzipan on there.
If they don't fall off.
And then maybe some offcuts of the cake as well.
Just you know, you're gonna chuck it out otherwise.
(laughs)
A Battenberg cupcake, worth a...
Worth a try.
Ah yeah, that looks pretty neat.
Yeah there's no method to it, I just shoved
both the batters in together.
Ah, love that.
So my first video on the Taste the World playlist is done,
if you would like to see one,
if you've got any suggestions do let me know.
I'd really like to get into recipes
from all over the world and maybe I could come to you,
and you could teach me.
Is that safe, I'm not sure, I'd have to vet you,
but I'd love to do that.
We've got the Battenberg slice here, I'm gonna try it,
I'm gonna man up.
I mean it's not aniseed or chilli, I can tolerate it,
I just uh, you know.
As for the t-shirt this is something I ordered
five months ago and it just randomly arrived.
I forgot about it, but I want to do a
oh my God Becky look at that pug, if you like that,
let me know and I'll make it work.
Hmm.
The apricot really, really helps it,
I think there was more on there then the store bought ones,
they're really thin here in the UK.
I got a nice chunk of jam on there.
The apricot, the softness of the sponge,
the delicate of...
The lightness, the delicateness of it,
but there's that texture of the marzipan
I just don't like.
If it wasn't for that I'd absolutely adore it,
but I aint gonna turn down cake.
Hope you try it, if you do, send me a picture
and I'll see you again next time.
Bye.
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