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Battenberg Cake with Matcha and Ground Cherry

This Matcha and Ground Cherry Battenberg Cake was a bit over the top, but it was a sort of wedding cake, so it was justified. First of all, this was actually the week one bake along for GBBO. I spaced out and forgot that florentines were actually week two.

Battenberg Cake

A few days before the battenberg cake challenge was assigned my wife and I attended her cousin’s zoom wedding. The following weekend the newly married couple came over to my in-laws house and we all had an outdoor socially distanced celebration of the wedding. I made this cake to bring for the celebration.

I’ve made a standard 2×2 battenberg in the past and I knew it wouldn’t be big enough, so I went with a 3×3 checkerboard. I also went fancier than normal on the decorations for the occasion, trying my first quilted cake effect.

So How do you make a Battenberg Cake?

I’m terrible at taking in progress photos, but I did remember to snap a picture of my battenberg pan in action. If you’ve ever wondered how you pull this effect off, this is it..

Battenberg Pan

It’s a pan with dividers you can add allowing you to bake multiple “bars” of cake in different colors. Since I went 3×3 I actually had to bake 3 batches (I just picked the 9 nicest bars for the cake. For the white bars, I used standard vanilla cake. For the green, I used this matcha chiffon cake recipe. No color was needed because the matcha provides a nice green color on its own.

For between the pieces of the grid, and around the outside of the assembled cake, I made a ground cherry jam. We had received a few pints of ground cherries from our farm share recently. This jam was the perfect opportunity to use them for something.

The Final Effect

Here you can see the finished effect of a cut slice..

Sliced Battenberg

..yeah, it’s not perfect, but the grid effect is still pretty striking. I bought a spiky wheel tool and followed assorted youtube tutorials to get the quilted effect. Then I just finished with some candy jewels and flowers I had on hand. I suck at covering cakes in marzipan and it looked sloppy. To clean it up I rolled out a long flat collar which I wrapped around the already covered cake. This means the sides have 2 layers or marzipan, which if I’m honest, was too much. It did make the cake look much better though.

The cake was a huge success with the crowd. It turns out the newlyweds were fans of GBBO as well, so they knew exactly what a battenberg was and were thrilled to try one. Much cake and champagne were consumed and a good time was had by all!

December 12, 2020
Florentines for GBBO Week 1

Florentines for the Great British Bake Off week one bake-along challenge. In case you missed my earlier post, I’m participating in a Facebook group that is baking along with this season of GBBO. Every week the moderator chooses one of the three rounds as our challenge. I felt like this was a bit of a slow start, but ok, it’s good to warm up before getting into crazier bakes.

Florentines

I went straight traditional, following Mary Berry’s recipe. The only change was, I didn’t have any candied peel, or oranges to peel and candy, so I just used more craisins in place of the peel.

They came out… fine. I have to say, they aren’t really my style of cookie. They were tasty, I mean, there’s plenty of sugar and chocolate enough that how bad could they be? To be honest, they probably aren’t something I’d make again unless requested.

Florentines

November 22, 2020
Birthdaypalooza

The end of October and beginning of November mark three birthdays in the household. Both of my in-laws have birthdays just a few days apart, and it’s also our dog’s birthday a few days before that. Last weekend we celebrated all three, and I also had to bake a chocolate babka for my GBBO bake along, so I did a lot of baking. The humans requested something with fall flavors like an apple or carrot cake. They both sounded really good, so, I figured, why not both?

The Human’s Cake

I ended up making a layer cake that had a layer of carrot cake sandwiched between two layers of apple spice cake. I figured all the flavors should go together well, and they did. It was a big hit. I wish I had more and better pictures, but while I baked the cakes and prepared the buttercream and frosting at home, I assembled and decorated at my in-law’s house, so I didn’t have my DSLR, lights, etc., to get good photos. What I present here are cellphone snaps, which sadly don’t really do the cake justice. I assure you it was beautiful.

The Cake All Assembled

For the carrot cake layer, I used this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction. I also used the cream cheese frosting recipe from there for the frosting between the layers of the cake.

For the apple spice layers, I used Preppy Kitchen’s Apple Spice Cake recipe. I just tweaked the amounts a bit to make 2 9″ layers. I was lucky to have both carrots and apples from our CSA membership which meant they were super fresh (like in the ground and on the tree the day before I used them fresh) and super good.

Putting it Together

For finishing I made a plain buttercream that I used to do a rustic crumb coat, and another batch of buttercream that I did with a mix of orange and red fall colors for some freehand decorating. It’s hard to see the dual color of the decorations in the picture but it was pretty striking in real life. I sprinkled on some yellow sprinkles for a final touch.

The Cake Cut

All in all this was a 3 layer 9″ cake.. it was HUGE. The photo above is what was left after 5 people already each had a slice. Cake for weeks!

The Dog’s Cake

The pup’s cake was a much simpler affair, but no less of a hit (let’s be honest, she doesn’t care what it looks like). I followed Love from the Kitchen’s Spoiled Dog Cake recipe. The only slight change I made was using whole wheat flour because it’s a little better for dog’s than regular AP.

Luna Was Three!

November 11, 2020
Mooncakes

I LOVE mooncakes. Every autumn (until this one) I track them down from my favorite Chinese bakery in New York City (Fay Da). Well, this year with.. everything.. I’m not making unnecessary trips to track down baked goods, so I figured I’d give them a try myself.

For the distinctive shape of the mooncakes, I knew I needed a press, so I hit Amazon. I didn’t spend a lot of time researching or anything, I pretty much looked for the one that would come quickest. I ended up with this set. They worked fine, albeit a little fidgety to swap the plates on the presses. I like that it comes with both round and square in both regular and mini sizes. I ended up making all minis this time around, but I suspect I would have had an easier time forming and pressing them if I went full size.

Let me start with the finished product before this post gets boring..

Mooncakes

Besides the mold, I needed a few ingredients that were a bit foreign to me (no pun intended). I needed lotus paste.. I decided to just make my own, so I got dried lotus seeds from an Asian supermarket. Looking for them was funny because I had no idea what they looked like, and they weren’t what I expected at all. (They are in the dish in the photo above) I also needed Golden Syrup, which isn’t super foreign to me, but I usually just use corn syrup when it’s called for. Since I had never made this before I wasn’t sure how important actual golden syrup was to the recipe, so I got some. The other ingredient that really threw me was ‘Lye Water’ since I really only know lye as drain cleaner.. and poison. Sure enough, the Asian supermarket had that as well, so I got some. Most recipes also call for salted egg yolks to put in the center. I don’t mind them, and will usually get a mix of with and without egg when I buy them, but I knew my wife would hate it, so I left out the eggs.

I basically followed this recipe from Taste of Asian Food. The few differences, I noted.. No egg, I made lotus seed paste, and honestly I found their directions on amount of dough and paste difficult to follow, so I just experimented a bit to find what worked. I also haven’t seen cake flour in months, so I made my own, which is basically just add a bit of cornstarch to AP flour.

Mooncake Interior

As you can see from the cross-section above, my mooncakes shape could use some work. I didn’t find the dough to be very easily workable. And once I had a ball of lotus more or less covered in dough I had to shove it into the mold, so the mooncakes ended up not super even. They worked though, and tasted great.

Would I make them again? Definitely. Will I buy them from the bakery next year assuming the world is back to normal? Definitely. 🙂

October 16, 2020
GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF! (also hobnobs)
Great British Bake Off is back!!

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the last 6 months have really sucked. They’ve sucked for the whole world. They’ve especially sucked for the United States, and on a personal level, they have been pretty crappy personally and professionally. Baking is basically the thing that’s kept me sane. To say I was excited when BBC teased the return of bake off a few weeks ago, would be an understatement. So finally, it’s back!!

To celebrate the first episode, I thought nothing would be better than hobnobs and a cup of tea while watching. Of course, no store-bought hobnobs would do, I had to bake my own.

Hobnobs and a cuppa for the Great British Bake Off premiere

They are delicious and pretty easy to make. Considering how hard it is to find them in the States I’d say it’s actually easier just to make them. The only tricky part is finding the correct oats. It took a good 4 or 5 tries until I was happy. Invariably you will find British recipes that say something like ‘use Tesco oats’ or, ‘use your morning oats’ or something else that probably works perfectly well for a Brit but leaves me thinking ‘WHAT IS IT?!?!’. I forget how I finally hit on what worked for me, but it’s Bob’s Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal. Is it perfect? I don’t think so honestly, but of the things I’ve got available to me, it’s given the best results.

Recipe based off of Izy’s at Top With Cinnamon.
Homemade Hobnobs

Homemade hobnob biscuits (cookies).
125 g Unsalted Butter
80 g Light Brown Sugar
2 tbsp Golden Syrup / Corn syrup
80 g Oats ((My best results have been with Bob's Red Mill Scottish Oatmeal))
4 tbsp Wheat Germ ((or just use more oats))
100 g Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
Coating (optional)
100 g Dark Chocolate
1 tsp Butter
Biscuits
Preaheat oven to 350F, line 2 baking sheets with parchment.
Using the paddle on a stand mixer cream together butter and sugar until smooth and then add the golden syrup.
Mix in the oats, then the flour, then the baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Each cookie should be about 2 teaspoons of dough to make them about the size of an actual hobnob, but I've found making larger ones works just fine as well. Whatever size you chose, press the balls of dough down so they are flatish. Leave room because they will expand when baking.
Bake for 10-12 minutes until they are golden brown. Let them cool on the sheet for a while because they are still pretty liquidy when removed from the oven. They harden as they cool, don't worry. Once cool enough transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Coating – Optional (but why wouldn't you?)
Melt your chocolate and butter on the stove top, ideally in a double boiler. If you don't have one, use a glass bowl floating in a pot of water.
Use a pallete knife or something similar to spread a thin even coat of chocolate on one side of each biscuit.
For bonus points you can try to pipe the iconic crosshacth pattern on them as well, but honestly I never bother.
I’m also excited to say I’ve joined Little House Big Alaska’s Great British Baking Show Bake-Along on Facebook. Each week I (and many others) will be re-creating either the signature, technical, or showstopper from the previous week’s episode of Great British Bake Off. Of course, I’ll be posting all the bakes here.
September 25, 2020