Introduction: Rubik's Battenburg Cake

About: Stasty is a simple and tasty food recipe blog. I love to cook and I love to talk about food, so this blog is really my ramblings and thoughts about cooking and eating. Some of the recipes are my own and some a…

Why make this cake?
The Rubik’s cube is close to my heart as I am a child of the eighties and the Rubik’s cube always brings me back to a time of joy and wonder. It’s hard to imagine kids today being as fascinated as I was by such a simple but clever toy. I wanted to make a cake that epitomizes this ingenious and timeless invention. I knew it would have to be a clever cake that would make you question how it was made. Thankfully I had the help of my other half and his engineering brain to assist with the planning and general maths of this cake. It took an entire day to make but was definitely worthwhile, especially when we cut the first slice.

Materials List
One Basic Battenberg – White coloured and Yellow coloured cake
- 6 oz. of butter
- 6 oz. of castor sugar
- 3 eggs
- 6oz of self-rising flour
- 2 drops of almond essence (optional for the white)
- Zest of half an unwaxed lemon (optional for the yellow)
- few drops of yellow food colouring

One Basic Battenberg – Red coloured and Orange coloured cake
- 6 oz. of butter
- 6 oz. of castor sugar
- 3 eggs
- 6oz of self-rising flour
- few drops of red food colouring
- Zest of half an orange (optional for the orange)
- few drops of orange food colouring

One Basic Battenberg – Blue coloured and Green coloured cake
- 6 oz. of butter
- 6 oz. of castor sugar
- 3 eggs
- 6oz of self-rising flour
- few drops of blue food colouring
- few drops of green food colouring

To finish
- 14oz of blackcurrant jam sieved
- 14oz. of plain white marzipan to cover the entire cake
- 2oz of icing sugar for rolliing out the marzipan

Tools
- Weighing scales
- Electric beaters
- Large mixing bowl
- Battenberg Tin
- Wire rack for cooling
- Large Serrated knife
- Saucepan
- Sieve
- Rolling pin
- Pastry brush
- Ruler

Step 1: Baking the Cakes

Pre-heat the oven 180 degrees Celsius. Grease and flour a Battenberg tin. My Battenberg tin was 8inches x 6inches and had 4 individual sections to put the different colours.
You'll need to make three cakes and each cake will comprise two of the colours needed - white/yellow, then red/orange and finally blue/green.
Cream together the butter and the sugar until it becomes light and creamy. Gradually add the beaten eggs. Then, carefully fold in the sieved flour.
Next split the mixture to make the two different colours. Take half of the mixture out, and place in another bowl. Add a few drops of food colouring to one batch. To the other half, add a few drops of a different food colouring.  For the white sections of the cake. I slightly over-beat the egg mixture and didn’t add any colouring. This achieved a pale off-white effect. Spoon the mixture into the separate sections of the tin. Place in the oven for 30-35 minutes. To test if it’s ready place a clean knife through the center, the knife should come out clean when it is fully cooked. If the cake rises over the tin, use a serrated knife to even off the top. Let the cake cool in the tin, once fully cooled, remove from the tin and place on a wire rack.
Repeat twice using the same method, ingredients and remaining food colours for the red/orange and blue/green cakes.
Optional: You might want to flavour the cakes as well as colour them. I used lemon zest for the yellow, orange zest for the orange and vanilla for the white. You want to find complimentary flavours that will work as a cake, so it's probably best to resist the temptation to put mint flavouring in the green as it could taint the whole cake.

Step 2: The Grid

Decide on the colour combinations. It is important that each slice is different. Each section overlaps so each slice of the cake reveals a differing combination.
I have included the map we created that would guarantee that each slice was different to the one previous.
Note: I've used the colour black on the map to represent white in the cake, because white looked clearer as the background of spreadsheet.

Step 3: Cutting Guide

With a ruler draw out a cutting grid that is the size of the tin. (Our tin was 8 inches x 6 inches). We drew our grid with pen and ruler on a sheet of A4 paper and measured all our cakes piece with this.
Cut out the cake pieces using your paper grid. We did this all together so we were left with deconstructed cake pieces of different sizes.

Step 4: Building the Cake

Roll out a long even slab of marzipan. We rolled ours out to be about 10 x 26 inches (10 = 8 inches plus another 2 inches spare to work with, 26 = 4 x 6 inches plus another 2 inches).
This will depend on your cake and tin size. Place the jam in a saucepan and warm over a low heat. Next, sieve the warm jam into a separate bowl to remove any seeds in the jam.
Begin with the bottom layer. With a pastry brush coat all the outside of the cake cubes and arrange on top of the marzipan with unjammed face pointing outwards.

Step 5: Sticking It All Together

Continue building using your spreadsheet to figure out where all the pieces go and applying the jam to stick it together.

Step 6: Wrapping in Marzipan

Once you have all three layers of cake in place, ensure that the outside of each piece of cake is covered in jam so the marzipan will stick.
Gently place the marzipan over the cake and cut off the spare on the edges.

Step 7: Slicing

To cut the cake use the grid to figure the correct place to slice to ensure you reveal a different colour slice. Voila!