So, I enter the hallowed door of pimpage with this humble offering – the Flattenburg 2.0.
I have been a lurker on PimpthatSnack for years, and only recently began my pimping career with a Mega-Jaffoid for a friend with a serious jaffa cake addiction. It went swimmingly, but I had been too wrapped up in making the monster that I had no time for photos. This time I vowed it would be different – yay, I would photo the pimpagenesis of the Flattenburg.
First I feel the need to comment on recent pimpage – while I cannot help but feel awe at pimps like the Creme de la Creme Egg – the perseverance and attention to detail leaves my jaw dropped and my flabber thoroughly gasted – I feel deep within me a yearning for the old school pimpage of such delicacies as the Burberry Curly Wurly and the Faberge Creme Egg – when pimps were pimps and size was not what mattered, it was what one did with it that counted.
Such whiffled my mind as I decided on the best way to pimp a Battenburg. I had seen previous efforts and felt they needed refinement – Godzilla would be charmed with his slice, but what if he brought a friend? A full cake was needed, I felt, as well as a difference in presentation.
So, Ladies, Pimps and Gentlemen, I present, the Flattenburg 2.0
Ingredients:
Total expenditure £5.94 plus four eggs from the fridge, caster sugar, red food colouring, baking powder and almond essence from the baking cupboard – probable total cost around £7.00.
I had toyed with the idea of insetting jelly jewels along its length, or underlighting it with LEDs, even using jam and hundreds and thousands to stencil the recipient’s name along the top, but as I ran these ideas past my advisors, they firmly slapped them down with the refrain, “But then it wouldn’t be a Battenburg.” So. the challenge, to create something definitely Battenburg, with a Pimped twist for a smoother more polished ride.
First – a recipe. All credit to “The Foody” website (www.thefoody.com) for furnishing me with a basic recipe for Battenburg. It did include “Ground rice” which I have never encountered, so I decided to switch that amount with ground almonds, which turned out well.
Second – Goals. Battenburgs always seem to me marginally undersized, so, Bigger. Also they roll over easily. I want something with a lower centre of gravity to assist in cornering, and a sleek profile to keep the air resistance to a minimum. I also want something which has no doubt as to which way up it should be served, these cakes with overmuch symmetry dominate the market. Taste, always important, it must taste like a Battenburg. So, three criteria backing up the Prime Directive = must be a Battenburg.
Lights – Camera – Action! Chuck ingredients in a bowl and mix them up. I doubled the quantities to ensure a good sized cake. This has to feed the staff of a theatre, they all eat cake in prodigious quantities.
This picture was taken rather late, but you can see a lovely little spatula bought specially to make it easier for me to eat what I can’t get out of the bowl with a spoon. Yum. And into two bowls. The recipe suggested cooking it all in one, but I think this would get messy, I decided to use two. Plus I had two bowls and why not? Divvy the mixture up, yellow in first, then colour the rest and splat that out into the next bowl.
Smooth it all down and wonder whether perhaps I should have tripled the quantities? Oh well, too late now. Oven? Preheated. Xbox on, save game loaded, and I have forty minutes to kill as many bandits as I can.
Turns out that’s quite a few.
Nothing can express the sheer worry this sight provoked in me. Had I put red food colouring in? Yes. So WHY IS MY CAKE NOT PINK? Can you tell the difference? Neither could I, even upside down. I couldn’t remember which tin I had put which mixture in either…. cue fifteen minutes of nervous bandit killing as I wait for the cakes to cool enough to begin surgery.
OK, so the cake is a pale pink inside. given the amount of red food colouring I used, I can’t help feeling I’ve been had, but hey, it’s about 38p a bottle, I’ll use more next time. It is pink enough to give the idea, and it tastes good.
As I find out as I test the cutoffs left by the trimming…
The basic structure fits, although I seem to be revisiting a problem I have. I can’t get my cakes to rise, it’s baking impotence. My fiance says it doesn’t matter, but it does to me. She suggests using a whisk, but I’m not sure having to use mechanical aids it going to make me feel better. Aah well, I was going for a reduced height profile anyway.
The jam goes on the oven to get liquid. I had a choice between apricot jam with bits in and one without, and I decided to try the one with bits in to give a fruitiness to the cake which perhaps one does not find with normal Battenburg – it smells good, but it proves to be a pain the the baking brush to apply.
However the jamming goes reasonably well, applying first to splat the pink/yellow layers together, and then the three dual-slices side by side.
It brings to mind the giant Angel Slice I have long admired. Perhaps a future project…
I have now entirely lost track of what tenses I am using, so here goes. I construct the Flattenburg’s cakey foundations and turn to the sugary nutty pasty outer layer. Rolling pin and dusted chopping board I begin. All goes well for a few minutes.
The round chopping board is just for mobility purposes, however, when i try to remove it from the application board I feel the Marzipain…
Aargh! Rinkles and Rips begin to appear, proving that my rolling ‘leetness is not as strong as my kung fu. However, a cunning plan occurs to me. It is not quite as cunning as a big bag of cunning things, but it is getting there, and is nearly as cunning as a fox with a degree in cunningness. I can turn the cake upside down into the good section and use the wrinkles on the base where people won’t see them until it’s too late. [Cue evil laugh]
A few nips, tucks and judicial insertions of the cut off Marzi, and I’m there – well, here, with a finished product, not looking quite as smooth and swooshy as I had dreamt it, but certainly looking more than edible.
One judicious flip later and…
The pink even looks more battenburgy when it’s all wrapped up with the yellow and the marzi.
For pure statistics, here’s a size picture. 
20 centimetres long, a good six or seven centimetres longer than Asda’s battenburgs, even when they’ve a 40% extra free offer on them.
So – a pimp completed, a story told, and a hopefully a good cake eating session instead of doing any work tomorrow.
Happy Birthday Soph!
Pimp dedicated to hard-working DSM Sophie Acreman.
Comments