Britain might be known for its more robust, sturdy baked offerings (thick fruit cake, scones, and ginger loaf), but we do dainty pretty darn well too when we want to.
This pink and yellow chequer-designed beauty is one of our most recognisable cakes, harking back to the late Victorian times – its name linked to the marriage of Princess Victoria (granddaughter of Queen Victoria) to German Prince Louis of Battenberg (changed to Mountbatten in 1917). In the North of England, it’s sometimes sweetly called Chapel Window Cake – its grid-like appearance to some looking like stained glass.
Early versions contained at least nine squares when cut through (sometimes more) and were presented in rectangles, squares AND circular styles of all sizes.
It’s the kind of cake that feels a bit special, and we think our modern version, flavoured with rosewater and roasted pistachio, tastes like even more of a treat.
Ingredients
175g butter, at room temperature
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
175g self-raising flour
75g roasted pistachio nuts
1 tsp almond extract
½ tsp vanilla extract
Rose extract – to taste
Food colouring (pink, green)
To decorate:
6 tbsp pistachio spread
4 tbsp apricot jam (or rose petal jam if you can find it)
500g marzipan – ideally natural
Icing sugar for rolling
100g white chocolate, melted
50g candied pistachio nuts
2 tbsp dried rose petals
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and grease and line a 20cm square tin. Use a piece of foil or card wrapped in greaseproof paper to make a strip that will evenly divide the tin in half without moving.
2. Cream the butter with the sugar until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla extract and flour and beat. Split the mixture in two. To one bowl add the chopped pistachio nuts, green colouring and almond extract. To the other add rose extract to taste and food colouring to create a shade of pink you like (remembering it will go slightly paler as it cooks).
3. Pour the mixtures into separate halves of the prepared tin and bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and springy. Leave to cool then turn out, cutting away any doming on top.
4. Once totally cold put one cake on top of the other and trim the edges to the same size, then cut through the middle of both lengthways across the tops.
5. Warm the pistachio paste a little and sandwich together two difference colours of sponge. Spread the tops of these with more paste and top the sponges with the remaining cake, pasting these together too in the middle – so you have an alternating chequerboard design.
6. Spread the outside with warmed apricot jam.
7. On a surface dusted with icing sugar, roll out the marzipan into a rectangle large enough to wrap the cake completely.
8. Place the cake upside down on the marzipan and brush the bottom with more jam. Wrap the marzipan around the cake to cover (leaving the ends exposed) and trim neatly.
9. Use melted white chocolate to arrange candied pistachios and rose petals over the top. Serve on your finest plates with your finest tea!
