Pink and Yellow yumminess

Growing up, one of my absolute favourite things to eat was Battenburg cake.  I used to have it all the time at my grandma's house.  She used to get it at Marks & Spencer's, when it was still open at Heritage Mall (when Heritage Mall still existed).

For those who don't know, it looks like this:

And it's basically pink and yellow cake with some jammish filling, wrapped in marzipan and then dusted in sugar.

When you eat it, you can actually feel your teeth falling out with the sweetness of it.  A lot of people hate it, but I really love it.

Living as we do in Canada, we can't get it here anymore (see above, re: Heritage Mall).  So I decided that I would make one myself.  With Google in hand, I found this recipe, which didn't really look all that hard.  I thought that the hardest part would be making the almond paste, since you can only buy it here around Christmas time.

Turns out making the almond paste wasn't really all that bad.  The rest of the recipe, however.......

I made the cakes, and froze them so I could work with them easier (I thought "how smart of me").  Then came the time to glue them all together with warm apricot jam.

Yeah, it sucks when your gluing material has chunks of fruit in it.  I should have known better, but I needed to maximize my jam usage, since I only had a small jar.

Ok - cakes glued, nice little checkerboard pattern.  Then came the time to roll out the almond paste.

That was terrible

It would either

1) stick to the rolling pin (which, by the way, has lost its handles, so you have to kind of grab it with your palms and avoid the dough)

2) stick to the counter - I didn't want to put flour down, because I don't want flour-y cake

3) both - and at the same time.

So, in my best immitation of my mom - who never really had the patience for detail, I crammed the paste in flaky, jammy chunks all around the cake.  Then I had to "roll it in sugar" - which really meant mashing the sugar into the paste, which was doing its best job of not letting it stick.

I wish that I had taken a picture of my franken-burg cake for your amusement.  In the end, it was horrible to look at, but was twice the size of the M&S cake (and the recipe made 2!!) - and tasted wonderful.