I can scarcely type with the amount of sugar I’ve eaten today. It’s fine though because I did an hour of pilates this morning. Exercise is hard feckin’ work. I’m ruined.

In any case my sudden athletic awakening coincided with my niece’s birthday. She deserved cake and cake is what she got. I do not exaggerate when I say this was the best cake ever. Granddad made the cake itself. He used the battenberg tin that sister #3 kindly bought me in Cork for my birthday. So look at the picture below and realise that the outside glory is only the beginning of the wonder of the cake as a whole. It is kind of a batternberg but without the marzipan.

The battenberg cake is made using the foolproof basic bun recipe.

(I say foolproof but I told my da what quantities to use as I was getting ready to go out, as I went towards the door, a slightly concerned da says ‘it’s a funny looking mix’. He forgot the eggs. So I must reiterate the importance of using all of the ingredients on the list)

I used the buttercream from my red velvet cake I did last year. It is very nice and you should use it. We only used it because we forgot to buy marzipan. So if you don’t want to do the buttercream buy marzipan.

The recipe.

Oven temperature 180 Celsius

Self raising flour           170g

Caster sugar                   170g

Butter                              170g

Eggs                                  3

Food colouring

One quantity of buttercream and a shagload of sweets.

Preheat the oven and spray a battenberg tin with non stick spray or look at this other convoluted recipe I did for Tom’s first birthday for those of you without a battenberg tin.

Put the flour, sugar, butter and eggs in a mixing bowl and beat till smooth.

Halve the batter and colour half as you wish.

Pour the coloured batters into the prepared tins and bake for 20mins or thereabouts.

When they’re done sandwich them together with a jam of your choosing.

Make the buttercream as I did in the red velvet cake recipe.

Smother the whole cake with more buttercream than you think is appropriate.

Stud the entire beast with the sweets in whatever random and trippy way you like.

Now bask in it’s splendor (and try rid your mind of how unhygienic kids are).