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DWE's Hexenberg Page |
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DWE's Hexenberg Page |
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One of my favourite cakes is the good old
Battenberg. I
always wondered (not very hard) how they were made. A small amount of
research led me to the most excellent Silverwood Battenberg cake tin and, using
a simple recipe, I baked the cake seen here.
I then got to thinking - always a bad idea. How can you improve on this favourite? Obviously, not the taste, so then how about the shape? Thus, the Hexagonal Battenberg Cake (or Hexenberg) came into being. This was also a way of combining cookery and woodwork and an excellent way of using up some of my mahogany blocks. |
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| The slight modification to the usual way of making a Battenberg is that only the central divider is used. | When the top is sliced off, you see that one of the sponge mixes has been coloured with red food colouring turning it pink. |
| I let them cool a little bit further while setting up the cutting jig. |
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The main trick with this cake is that the pieces must be cut so that they
form equilateral triangular prisms of the same size (Toblerone shapes).
This would be difficult
without a jig of some form.
This was created from a block of wood which had then been cut by a table saw at an angle of 30° to the vertical (Thanks Marco!). The block was then glued back together using some end pieces. Make sure that the gap is wide enough to slip a knife through the slit comformably. The second slit is at an angle of 45° for other designs of cake. I finished the wood with a number of applications of walnut oil. I used this rather than the Danish oil I normally use for my mahogany blocks since it was going to be in contact with food. |
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The cutting in action. Don't throw away the edge bits yet, nor eat them, nor
let anyone else eat them! They come in handy later. This is the cutting
pattern that you are aiming for:
| Hopefully all the pieces will be the same size and shape: 3 yellow and 3 pink. |
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| You assemble the cake using apricot jam as a glue. This can be quite tricky. I found that using the end pieces as pit props helped a lot and stops the cake falling apart while you are rolling out the marzipan (which is also glued on with apricot jam). |
Voilà! The final masterpiece.
This was also dubbed the Radiation Cake. Well I suppose that it is a form of yellow cake. |
