Marble Cake

MARBLE CAKE…is a lovely vanilla butter cake with streaks of chocolate. Its so moist and spongy, you can never go wrong with it. Mostly its just vanilla and chocolate cake, but there are other fruit variations like strawberries too with cinnamon and spices. For this cake, I adapted Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Vanilla Bean Pound cake recipe from her cookbook Rose’s Heavenly Cakes. She uses vanilla beans in the batter, but I totally skipped that part coz I didn't have any bean ;) What she does is, she scrapes the insides of 2 vanilla bean and she mixes that with the sugar used in the recipe. So you can imagine the intense flavour, vanilla bean infused sugar followed by vanilla extract. So if you have vanilla bean, then try infusing them in the batter. And the traditional method of creaming the butter and sugar together is replaced by mixing the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately and then combining them gradually together. So lets start marbling!

You Will Need:

184g of Unsalted Butter (Room Temperature)

1 1/2 tbsp Cocoa Powder

3/4 Cup or 150g of Superfine Sugar

3 Large Eggs

45ml of Milk

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 1/2 Cups or 150g of Flour (Sifted & Measured Out)

3/4 tsp of Baking Powder

1/4 tsp Salt

The Baking:

Preheat the oven at 100c.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder.

In another bowl mix together the eggs, vanilla and milk with a whisk until well combined.

Yeah that’s how it looked….trust me its the wet batter not my morning coffee ;) Just cut small chunks off the butter (MUST BE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE) and mix into the dry ingredients. Don’t worry if you see lumps of butter here and there that’s totally fine. Pour half of the wet ingredient into the dry mixture and beat it just until the mixture is moistened.

Again pour little wet mixture into the batter and whisk again for 30 sec. It may look like its not going to come together but it will.

Pour in the remaining wet mixture and whisk till you get a smooth non - lumpy batter.

Now, divide a little batter from the vanilla batter to make the chocolate cake. (Too many batter batter!!! ;))

Sift the cocoa powder into the divided batter and mix till its all combined.

Line a baking dish with parchment paper. I used my brownie tray for the cake, but you can use Bundt pan or even a loaf tin. Now, alternatively put a dollop of vanilla and chocolate batter on the pan.

Now with a toothpick or any skewer just swirl the batter making abstract pattern. Don’t swirl too much, you don’t want the batter getting mixed too much loosing the effect.

Bake it in a preheated oven for 30 – 40 min. Then, take it out and gently press the top of the cake. If it springs back its done or if it makes dents then you will know its still uncooked. Or simple insert a toothpick, if it comes out clean with no wet batter or wet crumbs its done. This needs to cool in the baking pan for 15 min, then transfer it carefully to a wire rack and let it cool completely before slicing.

Important Pointers:

Measure out the ingredients carefully. It should be precise.
My oven overheats, making the top of the cake to brown too quickly. If that happens in your case too just cover the top with foil.
Don’t forget to read more important key points in cake baking HERE!