Bamboozled By A Battenberg

Do you watch The Great British Baking Show? My daughter2 and I have watched every season together apart. By that I mean she's in her house and I'm in mine, but we start the program at the same minute and then text throughout the show. 

We decided this season we were going to attempt to bake the 'technical challenge' from each week's show. Both of my girls love to bake and are excellent bakers, but daughter1 is currently in a rental home several time zones away so she's not joining us in our little kitchen endeavor.  

If you don't watch the show here's the 411...

The season begins with 12 home bakers and then each week one is eliminated until a 'star baker' is named. There are three parts to each episode-

• the signature challenge (where the bakers put their own spin on the same dish; they've been able to practice this one ahead of time at home)

• the technical challenge (where the bakers follow a surprise recipe, usually an incomplete one at that)

• the show stopper (showcasing their talent in a showstopping bake, also one they've been able to practice at home). 

We're doing this at our own pace and a week ago watched the first episode. In the technical challenge contestants had to taste a mini Battenberg cake, then replicate it without a recipe. 

prepping the pan...two batters, one pan

Spoiler alert! We used a recipe. In fact at one point I was working with pieces of three different recipes because whew, this was not easy. I had to watch a youtube video just to get the pan set up. 

If you don't know what a Battenberg is it's a light sponge with various colored sections held together with jam and then covered in marzipan. The cake calls for homemade jam and homemade marzipan but we both bought the apricot jam and tried making the marzipan ourselves. Three ingredients. How hard can it be? 

Harder than it should have been that's for certain. 

I do not care for marzipan. After making this cake I especially don't like it. In fact I use almond paste to make macaroons at Christmas time and I told my daughter I'm not sure I'll make them this year because I may never get the smell of almond paste out of my head. 

I had this notion I'd snap pictures documenting the process but y'all! Ain't nobody got time to take pictures when they're trying to put a Battenberg together. I was three quarters of the way through when company dropped by so I paused. The cakes were baked (that was simple) and I'd made one batch of marzipan that was so sticky you couldn't work with it so I froze the cakes and figured I'd deal with the rest another day. 

Hubs took the spackle knife to the countertop (only slightly kidding) and then it was actually something like four days before I could face it again. And I waited til hubs was going out because he for sure couldn't face it again-ha! 

The TV bakers got it all done in two hours and mostly succeeded (although theirs weren't perfect either). Watching them make their cakes had us thinking it wouldn't be too hard, but we both struggled. We sent a million hilarious (to us) texts, our kitchens and ourselves were a hot mess, and while we wouldn't call the finished product a complete disaster it came awfully close. 

my finished cake

My daughter set hers in front of her 2-year old son who asked her to 'take the lid off' (that would be the marzipan) and then he left the cake and enjoyed the lid. Pure sugar so of course. 

my daughter's finished cake

This is not a cake I would ever make again, order in a restaurant, or serve to a guest. Unless maybe I bought it from a British bakery. 

Week 2 is Biscuit (Cookie) week. We consider this our wheelhouse so here's hoping!