Rainbow Battenberg cake

No, that's not the version of Android that my new phone is running but rather my birthday cake. I first saw and tried this cake at Teacup in Manchester and immediately wanted to try and have a go at making it for myself. I followed the recipe for Battenburg [sic] cake in Leiths Baking Bible but made one and a half times the quantity of mixture and of course added colouring.

I created the different layers by first dividing the mixture into three and colouring it red, green, and blue. I don't know the exact quantities of food colouring used, just that it was enough to get a satisfyingly vivid shade of each colour. I then took roughly two quarters of each colour and combined them separately to make green, orange and purple. I then put the mixture into two square 20 cm tins with three stripes in each tin. I didn't bother to separate them in any way, just put them in carefully and hoped they wouldn't mingle too much. I baked the two cakes at 180°C for around 20 minutes.Once the cakes were cooled I cut each cake into three, sandwiched them with apricot jam, trimmed the edges and wrapped the whole thing in marzipan. I should warn you that the cakes will not look rainbow coloured when they come out of the oven, their technicoloured tendencies will only appear once you cut into them.

I will definitely be making this again. I'd like to make the division between the colours neater and (although it tasted fine) I'd like to do a little more to promote flavour over colour, maybe by using natural fruit colours.

Written on my shiny new Android phone.