Recipe: Marble Butter Cake

Other than butter cake, my mum's next favorite cake is marble butter cake. Baby D was off school this week, so we decided to make a marble cake for Grandma :)

A marble cake is a cake with a streaked or mottled appearance (like marble) achieved by very lightly blending light and dark batter. I chose to use my trusted butter cake recipe for the lighter-colored element, and for the darker batter, I have added in 2 tablespoons of Valrhona cocoa powder. Using 2 spoons, the cake batter are alternately placed into the baking tin, and to achieve the marble effect, a skewer is gently run through to create "swirls".

A lot of marble cakes that we get from bakeries are not rich enough for my mum's taste. This marble butter cake on the other hand definitely delivered -  it was rich and moist, and we simply love having two different flavours in one cake. Baby D was very happy to present this cake to his Grandma, which she loved a lot.

Marble butter cake
Recipe by Baby Sumo, adapted from here
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 65-70 minutes
Serves 8-10


Ingredients
250g good quality unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
180g caster sugar
4 eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla essence
200g self raising flour, sifted
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp milk, at room temperature
2tbsp good quality cocoa powder




1. Preheat oven to 170°C (no fan).

2. Grease and line the base of a 20cm cake tin.

3. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Then, add the eggs one at a time, and beat well, repeat until all eggs are used. Mixture should be light and fluffy. Add the vanilla essence, and mix.

4. Fold in sifted flour in 3 batches, until well combined. Add the milk and mix well. Your batter will be of a dropping consistency at this point.

5. Spoon out 1/3 of the batter into a separate bowl. Stir the cocoa powder into this, mixing well. Using 2 spoons, dollop the chocolate and butter cake mixes into the tin alternately until all the mixture has been used up. Tap the tin to remove any air bubbles.

6. Using a skewer, gently swirl it around the mixture in the tin a few times to create a marbled effect.

7. Bake for 65-70 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

8. Allow cake to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from tin and allow to cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

Note: Your child can help turn the machine on/off, pour in the eggs, fold in the flour, spoon the batter into the baking tin and swirling the batter with a skewer.

I am submitting this post to Bake along event #59 with theme "Marbled Butter Cake" organized by Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours and Lena from Frozen Wings.


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