Typeogateaux

The Battenberg Press

Planning:

The idea behind The Battenberg Press was to use the modular cubes, created from separation of colour of the sponge, to form letters in a 4X3 grid. The marzipan will hold the modules together, creating a stable structure. Provided with enough cake modules and marzipan, you can create whatever word or phrase; we plan to write ‘TYPE’ as an example and to fit appropriately with the brief. This cake could act as a kit, however we plan to show it in a completed form. We will name it ‘The Battenberg Press’ after the Gutenberg Press, as it is a cake that forms type, like the Gutenberg Press is a machine that forms type.

Making:

To make the cake we bought two Mr Kipling boxes of 5 Mini Battenbergs and cut each in half. We then peeled of the marzipan and split up the modules of coloured cake. When assembling, we laid down a layer of marzipan and built the letterforms from bottom to top. This all went well until we approached the ‘E’ and realised the 4X3 grid is not sufficient to create this letterform. To solve this problem we cut the prink modules that form the crossbar in half, and filled the other half with the pale sponge. This solved the issue, however if we were to do it again we would have made the height one module higher.

Evaluation:

The overall appearance of the final product is effective and is exactly how we intended it to look. We think the idea behind the cake is delivered well due to the name and rationale. The packaging makes the product appear professional and was tasty. To improve, we would have been more careful when assembling the marzipan layered too much makes the cake look messy, and we would have thought about the size of the grid so that letters such as ‘E’ fit the cake using whole modules rather than cut in half.