This is the most fiddly cake I have ever made but the taste makes up for it!  Finding red food coloring was not easy either, my first attempt at this cake turned out green and yellow instead of pink and yellow.  When I have made this in the past with my Mum we used cochineal but you cannot buy that now and I have used all mine up.  So off to the supermarket I went to buy some red food coloring, but it was not a success.​

The yellow food coloring was good but the red turned the cake mixture green!  I have no idea why.  Anyway I went to a specialist cake shop and managed to track down some pink icing gel.  This turned out better, but not perfect. See what you think! This recipe makes two small cakes.

Oven  190 C 375 F gas mark 5  grease two 1 lb loaf tins

• 8 oz Butter
• 8 oz Caster Sugar
• Vanilla essence
• 4 Eggs
• 8 oz Self Raising Flour
• 1 lb block of marzipan
• Apricot jam
• 1 teaspoon red food coloring
• A few drops of yellow food coloring

Cream the butter and sugar together until soft and creamy then add the beaten eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of flour to stop the mixture from curdling.  Then add the vanilla essence and fold in the flour.  Divide the mixture into two halves and color one pink and the other yellow by dropping the color in slowly until the desired color is reached.

Do not over beat.  Put into the prepared tins and bake for approximately 20-25 minutes. until firm and a cake tester comes out clean.

Allow to cool then trim away the edges and cut into matching stick like pieces.  You should end up with four yellow sticks and four pink sticks.

Cut the marzipan in half and roll out between two sheets of baking parchment into a large rectangle.  Warm the jam to make it easier to brush onto the cake and marzipan, then with the short end of the marzipan facing you – brush with jam.  Place one stick of pink cake and one stick of yellow cake onto the marzipan and brush with jam, then place another stick of yellow cake onto the pink stick and a pink stick onto the yellow stick thus creating a checkerboard effect.

Brush the rest of the marzipan with the jam and roll the sponge up inside the marzipan carefully sealing the edges.  Trim the ends and wrap in grease proof paper and pop in the ‘fridge to harden the marzipan so it will be easier to slice.  Repeat with the second half of marzipan and the rest of the cake.

After all that hard work you will need a nice cup of tea so sit down and try a piece of cake with it.    -JAB