The Great British Bake off Battenburg Cake

We we enjoyed watching this series of The Great British Bake off competition and we thought Jo deserved to win although we were fearing Holly might run off with it!  Poor MaryAnne didn't do herself justice on the final and would have been our 2nd to win if we'd been able to vote.
No.2.son and I have enjoyed watching this competition with interest more for the technical/bake side than the personalities although we did have our "favourites" and a few we disliked/found irritating it was the technical challenges we loved the most.
Last week we watched the first of the Masterclasses and decided to bake a classic Battenburg Cake! (I fancied the coffee/walnut but no.2.son was less keen and as we were jointly making - and EATING it we set about finding a recipe)
Luckily one of the library books I've got at the moment, the Hairy Bikers' Best-Loved Recipes, featured it and its also available here.

The cake was quite easy to bake and assemble and we enjoyed making it although I seemed to end up with the less attractive tasks such as washing/tidying up and rolling out the marzipan! between us we had a couple of hours of fun and the final cake was declare a success! and delicious.
Next week is the Sachertorte masterclass and I have a recipe for this in one of my books also so we plan to give this one a go!

separate the two cake mixtures to bake

the two baked sponges

checking the baking is done

slicing the fingers - sponge!

applying the apricot jam and assembling sponges

the finished Battenburg!

sliced and enjoyed with cup of tea!

Elsewhere on the hob was my popular corned beef stew bubbling away to give us some comfort food for this turn of weather we're now having - this is a favourite of dh and no.1.son (who isn't here, at Uni presently) and no.2.son is not keen so I took advantage of this and prepared a batch which I ate half and froze other half while cooking "chips" for no.2.son which he was pleased/relieved with!!

A quick and easy and filling warm "stew" this is one that I remember from my childhood that my LateMother used to make and we call it "corned beef stew" the only addition I make is to add chilli! I love chilli! and since dh favours it too, now its just the two of us I added twice as much! hot-hot-hotter! but yumm!

bubbling away

to become a thickened stew

That followed by a slice of cake with cup of tea and a large G+T later on while watching tv marathon of Harry Hill, XFactor and Jonathon Ross it was a great way to spend a Saturday!