Daring to do it: Battenberg Cake

Mandy of What The Fruitcake?! came to our rescue last minute to present us with the Battenberg Cake challenge! She highlighted Mary Berry’s techniques and recipes to allow us to create this unique little cake with ease.

I did not know what a Battenberg cake was before this challenge.  I did, however, know that I had seen fun checker board-like cakes before and kind of wondered how they were assembled.  Well, it turns out that those checkered cakes are Battenbergs...!  I made two versions of this cake for the challenge.  While neither used the recipe Mandy provided, her instructions were invaluable.
Version number one - chocolate and vanilla:
(Ok, chocolate and plain.  It is hard to have a vanilla cake when you forget to add the vanilla!)
The cakes, cooling:

The cakes, cut and stacked:

My chocolate plastique - not sure it was salvageable:

The chocolate - after some major elbow grease and rolling!

Assembling the cake, with the fudge icing "glue":

The final cake:

Yummy!!

Version number two - blackberry and lemon:
The cut cakes, ready to stack:

Adding the homemade lemon-blackberry jam "glue":

All stacked and covered with jam:

My first attempt at fondant - homemade butter cream fondant:

The finished cake - a bit messy from the soft fondant mixing with the jam:

Maybe not the prettiest cake, but definitely tasty!

Thank you, Mandy, for introducing me to this method and to the Battenberg experience!  You definitely inspired some beautiful creations, and your support was appreciated throughout the month.
Take a look here to see what my fellow Daring Bakers created!