the marble rut

So there's been a bit of a thing going lately with marble cake & me. As much as I try to stay away from it because I feel we've seen more of each other than is healthy, I just don't seem to be able to. It's the children's fault, I promise.

Every time the children want cake, they want marble cake. Or lemon cake. That's acceptable too. They even discovered a great love for the cranberry & white chocolate cookies I told you about before, but even their buttery goodness has not conquered there desire for all cakes to be marbled.

When Will told me what he wanted for his birthday cake, well, you'll never be able to guess what he asked for, not in a million years. Oh, did I hear someone yell, 'marble cake?' Ah well, you're cleverer than I gave you credit for. Of course he wanted marble cake. What else?! Also, it needed to be a marble cake that was a football pitch. Okaaay.

Now, before you judge me, please remember that I never said I could decorate children's cakes. I might be able to do wonders with a piping bag, but novelty cakes? They're not really my thing. So, I will ashamedly show you a photo of this cake when it was four days old - Will did not want to spoil it at his birthday party, so refused to cut it. I had talk him into spoiling this 'masterpiece' today.

Feel free to laugh. I did. It looks awful. But just remember that we're talking about marble cake here, not about how to make children's birthday cakes, ok?

Right, deep breath...I might end up removing the photographic evidence from this blog because it is just so embarrassing, but I suppose pictures make blogs look better, even if they are embarrassing.

Are you rolling about laughing right now? Or maybe you just threw your head back with laughter? Please do tell me if this cake has induced laughter because that really would be the right response. Please don't tell me that it's good because I would have to call you a liar. The photo I would really love to show you is the one I took right after I'd taken this one - it's of Will licking the icing off the backside of one of the playmobil footballers - a classic shot - but I don't have his parents' permission to post photos of him here so I won't do that.

Swiftly moving on to this marble cake I keep jabbering about. I'll post the recipe here once & for all and hopefully I'll never have to talk about it again. Don't get me wrong, it's a tasty cake, but I am a little bit shocked about how marbling could take over my baking so much.

It is so simple to make. Essentially, if you were to follow this recipe for chocolate sponge, but divide the mixture in two before adding the cocoa, you'd be three quarters of the way to having your marble cake in the oven. I'll break it down for you anyway to try & make it as clear as is possible with a marble cake...

Marble Cake

ingredients

225g / 8oz unsalted butter, softened

225g / 8oz caster sugar

200g / 7oz self raising flour

25g / 1oz cocoa

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

150g milk chocolate - optional

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4. Grease & line a rectangular roasting tin - approx. 30cm x 23cm. (I'm sorry, I don't know the exact dimensions of the tin I use.)

2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter & sugar.

3) Beat in one egg. Add a little flour, sieved, & the vanilla extract, then beat again.

4) Beat in the second, third and fourth eggs as above - adding a little flour with each addition.

5) Fold in the remaining flour.

6) Divide the mixture in half, putting one half into a new large bowl. 

I never bother to weigh the halves, I just go by sight & it's fine. All that happens if it's not very precise is that you'll end up with one half more chocolatey or vanilla-ry then the other half.

7) Add the sieved cocoa to one half and fold in. Dollop heaped dessertspoons of the mixture into the prepared tin then use a knife to swirl the vanilla & chocolate mixes together.

 

8) If you fancy some chocolatey goodness in your marble cake, melt 150g milk chocolate and drizzle in a swirly marbly fashion over the mixture. You'll end up with beautiful chunks of chocolate throughout the cake.

If you do this, the weight of the melted chocolate will mean that the cake does not rise evenly. This really isn't a problem as you cut it up into squares so it doesn't show. Unless, of course, you need to transform your cake into a football pitch. If that's the case, don't use melted chocolate otherwise you'll have lumpy turf.

9) Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes away clean.

10) Leave the cake to cool in the tin for a few minutes before transferring onto a wire rack & removing the baking paper.

On Wednesday I baked this cake twice. The second time around I used a bigger pan & went a little wild, using 5 eggs and increasing all of the other quantities by 1oz / 25g and it worked like a dream. So feel free to adapt to fit your cake requirements and the likelihood is, it'll work if you stick to the general rule of equal quantities of butter, sugar & flour.

Cake Count :: 902