Battenberg cake
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Battenberg cake (also: Battenburg cake, Window cake) is a light sponge cake which, when cut in cross section, displays a distinctive two-by-two check pattern alternately coloured pink and yellow. The cake is covered in marzipan and, when sliced, the characteristic checks are exposed to view. These coloured sections are made by dying half of the cake mixture pink, and half yellow, then cutting each resultant sponge into two long, uniform cuboids, and joining them together with a little cream, jam, or icing, to form one cake.
The origin of the name is not clear, but it is sometimes attributed to the Battenberg family, who lived in England during the late-19th century. One theory claims that the cake was created in honour of the marriage in 1884 of Queen Victoria's granddaughter to Prince Louis of Battenberg.
Another theory links the origins of the cake to Prince Alexander of Battenberg (1857-93), the uncle of Earl Mountbatten, son of Prince Alexander of Hesse, and a nephew of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Nominated Prince of Bulgaria, he was antagonistic to the political philosophy of the Bulgarian Liberal party and suspended the country's constituion. When he was overthrown by a Russian-backed conspiracy in 1886, Alexander was forced to abdicate and retired to Darmstadt in Austria, where he spent his declining years baking yellow and pink cuboids of cake and wrapping them in a marzipan overcoat.
Battenburg markings are high-visibility yellow and blue/green/red/black fluorescent chequered vinyl squares, affixed in recent times (since 2001 or so) to the sides of Emergency service vehicles in the United Kingdom in order to make them more visible on the roads.
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