Strawberry Ube Battenberg Cake Recipe

This striking strawberry ube battenberg cake looks impressive but is relatively easy to make – and you don't need a special cake pan to make it in, either. Just a regular square one.

If you want to be exact with the two sizes of cake, weigh the cake batter when you're dividing it in half before flavouring them with ube and strawberry. I just eyeballed it though, and trimmed them to size afterwards. Make sure you keep the trimmings to snack on, later.

You can also see how I make this on my YouTube video:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients:

170g unsalted butter, softened
170g caster sugar
3 eggs
170g self-raising flour
3 tbsp milk
Pinch of salt
Ube and strawberry flavouring
Pink and purple food colouring (optional)
Strawberry jam
400g good quality marzipan
Icing sugar for dusting

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line an 8" square baking tin with a long strip of baking parchment, creating a crease in the centre of the paper that stands up in the centre to separate the two halves of the tin.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy, then whisk in the eggs. Add the flour, salt and milk, beating until just combined.

3. Divide the cake batter evenly between two bowls, and flavour one with ube and the other with strawberry flavouring. Add a few drops of additional food colouring if necessary.

4. Scoop the ube cake batter into one side of your divided tin, and the strawberry batter on the other, smoothing each down evenly. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until the cakes are risen and golden, and bounce back when poked lightly. Leave to cool completely.

5. When cool, cut each cake in half lengthways and trim the sides so you have four even long blocks of cake. Place one ube and one strawberry block side by side lengthways, and stick them together with some warmed strawberry jam, brushing the sides of the cake with it. Now take the remaining two blocks of cake and place them on top, but with the strawberry on top of the ube and the ube on top of the strawberry, creating the checkerboard pattern. Stick together with more jam.

6. Roll out the marzipan thinly and, using more jam as glue, wrap the cake up in it. Trim off any excess marzipan, and trim the ends of the cake. And that's it! You have a colourful battenberg cake.

7. If you like, make roses out of the leftover marzipan by colouring it pink and shaping the petals (visit my YouTube channel and check out today's video to see how). You can see how I made the royal icing leaves (which are pandan flavoured) in my recipe for pineapple tarts, too.

Enjoy, and have fun.