A Battenberg cake for my princess to celebrate a big milestone.

This post was intended to be written on Thursday, but Thursday swallowed me whole. I was so, mentally and emotionally exhausted, it wouldn't have come out right.
Thursday was my daughter’s first day of school I wanted to be the mom that was overjoyed that her child was starting this new adventure; I knew it was silly to be upset over imminent growing up and it was part of life.

My husband and I took her to her first day of school. Adhya was all exicted when we reached the school, she had to leave her shoes outside and the shoe cubby had her name written on it, and I could slowly feel the feel the lump forming in my throat. She suddenly started to look so much more grown up to me than she had this morning. The school is so big and our Adhya is still so little (a baby still in my eyes).

I was so overwhelmed the whole day sitting at home with my younger one I could not help but think of her every single moment as to what she might be doing, has she made friends yet, has she eaten, does she like her school? Is she searching for me? And a part of myself was eagerly waiting for the phone to ring hoping that it could be the teacher to tell me she been crying and I need to pick up from school right away.

I kept praying “god please just take care of her ” and kept telling myself that this is the beginning of her becoming her own person. And this is the first step that she will take and there are so many more things ahead of her. I have to remember that she will have to experience the unhappy and disappointing parts of growing up and I can no longer protect her from it and it’s important for her to experience things on her own, and I will always be there for her no matter what. I need to stop being silly and also have to remember that it’s only nursery, and she’s still our baby for now.

Today post is all for my daughter Adhya, a princess cake for my little princess to celebrate her first day of school. The first Battenberg cake was made to celebrate the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Victoria, to husband Prince Louis of Battenberg. I was looking to make something special for adhya’s when I came across this recipe. Before making this cake, I hadn’t eaten a single crumb of a Battenberg cake I had no clue how it tasted. But there was something about the checkered squares in yellow and pink that made me thinks of Alice in wonderland. And suddenly had a feeling that this cake would be apt to celebrate my baby's big milestone.

So here goes the recipe for a yummy Battenberg cake. The strips of pink and yellow sponge that you see are glued together using apricot jam and the whole cake is covered in marzipan. And this is my first venture with marzipan I found it quite difficult to work with marzipan but I think I scored well.

The recipe below is adapted from many online recipes and made to suit my taste and the ingredients that I had in my pantry. And believe me the cake is perfect to make somebody’s day special and it’s an absolutely magical cake both in taste and looks.

Battenberg Cake Recipe

To make the sponge

To assemble the cake

To cover the cake with marzipan  

Notes :

• You can use any recipe for the sponge if you do not want to follow this
• I powdered the almonds myself in a coffer grinder / mixer but before that I blanched the almonds  for 2 minutes in hot water , removed the skin and dried them on a kitchen towel.
• Working with marzipan was difficult for me it kept sticking to the base when I rolled hence I recommend refrigerating the paste before rolling and I used a generous amount of confectioner's sugar to roll and that did contribute to the extra sweetness to the marzipan.