CHOCOLATE MARBLE CAKE!

Love cake – if I’m really honest, it’s the thing I like cooking (and eating of course) best of all. So in honour of Easter, here’s a chocolate marble cake. There’s nothing vintage or re-modernised about this at all, and the only reason for its existence is that it’s simply delicious. And given there’s probably a lot of chocolate around right now, and well it’s always possible that you might be looking for a way to get rid of some of it – ha , fat chance! – But none the less, spare chocolate is a good excuse to make a chocolate marble cake.

So – cake is one of those things that you’ll read about in books and on the tv, you’ll be told that you can do nothing but follow the recipe, and if you don’t it’ll fail and that cake is a chemical recipe for which you must have the right quantities of everything or it’ll fail. This is not entirely untrue, you have to include some form of raising agent, but that raising agent can be a simple as air. At any rate I have a method for making cake that means essentially it will never fail, and you can apply it to just about any recipe of cake that you like, and keep whatever proportions the recipe says.

In this instance, the proportions should be as follows.

4 eggs

4 oz of caster sugar

2 oz of corn flour

2 oz of self raising flour

2 oz of plain flour

2 oz of butter

A dash of Vanilla extract

4 oz of good chocolate and a tablespoon full of Nutella

Alternatively of course you can go for 4 oz of self raising flour, or even 4 oz of plain, but in that instance you will need a level teaspoon of baking powder, sifted into the flour.  

Modern flours need very little sifting per se, which was originally used to remove the weevils from it – vile little black insects, and if you buy your flour from a corner shop where no one else ever buys it, and it’s been there on the ground shelf for months, you may well find black round ‘bits’ in your flour – this will be weevils, and I recommend ditching the whole bag, and washing out whatever container you keep it in. Flour should always be kept inside a container that will protect it from damp. 

Now you will also need a baking tin – in my instance I use a 7 inch springform tin, that I line with cake liners that I can buy in the supermarket. If I’m making smart cake, and don’t want the lines up the sides, then I will line the tin with greaseproof paper, and you can get a simply wonderful four inch roll of baking parchment from Lakeland, that sits around the sides extremely well. In fact when I think of the changes there have been to baking equipment over the last 30 – 35 years, and I was stuck in domestic science classes making the good old Victoria Sponge – it’s an entirely new ball game. 

Anyhow, you will also need two bowls to start with, and the first thing that you should do melt the chocolate over a pan of gently simmering water. 

Ensure that the water does not touch the bottom of your bowl, you can do this in a microwave, but I tend to stick to the methods I know best – just pop it in the bowl and leave it be until it is completely melted. Remove the choc from the pan and leave it to cool whilst you make your cake mixture.  Separate your eggs – pop the yolks into a small bowl, and the whites – and there’s no substitute here for fresh eggs, the whites should stand up proud and thick, it makes such a difference – into a large bowl. I have a set of electric beaters, and I use them, but there’s no reason why you can’t do it by hand, I’ve done this for years. And of course if you have one of those fabulous table top mixers by all means use them, but frankly I don’t think many people do, and to use nothing but on cookery programs on the box means many people think you can’t use anything but, which is rubbish. 

You'll have to excuse the lack of photos of this bit - my phone ran out of power!

Anyhow add your sugar to the whites, and set too – you are aiming to produce something near to a meringue.  However not a stiff peak meringue, simply a nice thick mixture, that when you lift your whisk, or your beaters, leaves a nice trail on the top of your mix. The trail should remain too, not sinking back into the mix after a couple of seconds – I find a good three to five minutes of beating produces the mix I’m looking for.  With a spoon I give the whites a good beat, and add the vanilla extract to them. I then add the yolks to the whites, with a tablespoon of flour which prevents the mixture from splitting. This should be mixed with either a large flattish tablespoon, or a spatula – you want to get the flattest implement that you have, and mix carefully. No beating at this point, the whole point of the meringue effect is that this is the air that will raise the cake, and having got it in there, there’s no point in beating it out. Mix using a figure of eight motion, scraping down the sides of the bowl.

Melt the butter and pop it on one side to cool.  Whilst it’s cooling, add in the rest of the flour, and make sure it’s well incorporated into the mix.

Taking your small bowl that you had the yolks in, add two tablespoons full of the mixture, and add the butter to this. This should be beaten well to incorporate the butter into it, and it won’t want to be incorporated – I tend to use a whisk for this, and beat it very firmly. As soon as the butter is incorporated, add the buttered mix to the whole of the mixture, and using the spatula, and the same figure of eight motion, incorporate the buttered mix into the whole of the mix. Do this lightly. At this point, if you were making a plain Vanilla sponge, your mix would be ready, but for our marble cake, divide the cake mix and stir in gently to the melted chocolate. Mix this well, you want a completely chocolaty portion of the mix.

Have your cake pan ready with its lining. Put spoonfuls of both mixes into the pan, carefully – I suggest two of the vanilla mix, and a spoonful of the choc, then another of the vanilla and two of the choc – however you like to do it is fine at this stage. Then taking a skewer, insert till it is gently touching the bottom of the mix and mix! 

Draw through the mix gently twisting around until you achieve a marbled effect on the top of the cake. Now you can see from the photos I wasn’t entirely successful in this for this particular cake – it’s because I lifted the skewer off the bottom of the pan. Make sure all of the cake is fully marbled. Then put into a hot oven, I baked mine at 180 degrees C, which would be 350 degrees F, or gas mark 4 – 5 for 40 minutes. 

When this was done, I then tested it with the clean skewer – insert and when you pull it out, the skewer should be clean with no trace of unbaked mix on it. Take it out of the oven, leave it in the pan for ten minutes before decanting and allowing to cool completely on a cooling rack. I left mine undecorated, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t pour melted chocolate over the top, or sprinkle it with icing sugar. This cake freezes excellently, and makes a pefect contribution to a bake sale – and indeed, you could make them in large muffin cases to sell as individual cakes. Additionally you could add chocolate chunks, or buttons to the mix, but I’m not sure I would be wanting to add anything else. There’s a perfection in a marble cake that comes from the marbling itself and the combination of flavours. Enjoy!