Recipe | Chocolate and vanilla marble loaf cake

This marble cake is a tasty mixture of chocolate and vanilla with the bonus of a pretty swirl.

I found this recipe for chocolate and vanilla marble cake here, on Pretty. Simple. Sweet (thank you!). The pictures over there are a heck of a lot better than mine! It’s been dark and gloomy round these parts recently, which doesn’t make for good photos.

I used a loaf tin, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use another shape of baking tin.

Ingredients:

250 g / 9 oz / 1.75 cups plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
170 g / 6 oz / 0.75 cups butter or margarine at room temperature
250 g / 9 oz / 1.25 cups caster sugar (the original recipe uses granulated)
3 eggs at room temperature (large or medium will be fine)
1 tsp vanilla extract
150 ml / 2 thirds of a cup of full-fat milk (the original recipe says you can also use buttermilk or sour cream)
120 g / 4 oz / 0.5 cups chocolate, melted (best to use dark or plain. I melted the chocolate in the microwave, breaking it into small chunks and heating for a minute, then additional 20-second bursts and stirring until it was all melted)

Method:

Grease the inside of your loaf tin with butter and line it with greaseproof paper.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees C fan) / Gas Mark 4 / 350 degrees F.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and put to one side.

In an electric mixer, beat the butter until pale. Add the sugar and beat again until fluffy (this will take 2-3 minutes).

Add the eggs to the mix one at a time, beating between each addition until incorporated. Add the vanilla extract.

With the mixer on a low setting, add the flour in three additions, adding half the milk between each addition (flour – milk – flour – milk – flour). You may have to scrape the mixer attachment and the sides of the bowl between additions to make sure all the flour is incorporated.

Pour half the marble cake mixture into a separate bowl. Add the melted chocolate to one half of the batter and stir thoroughly.

Spoon the chocolate and vanilla mixtures into your tin alternately, to make a checkered pattern, like this:

Once you’ve covered the bottom of the tin, start on the second and third layers, making sure you put chocolate on top of vanilla and vice versa. When you’ve used up all the raw marble cake mixture, insert a knife to the bottom of the tin and pull through the two colours to swirl them. Don’t over-mix or the whole cake will be chocolate colour:

Bake for 45-55 minutes until a knife or skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean/with some crumbs on it but no wet mixture.

Leave the chocolate and vanilla marble loaf cake to cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes before transferring from the tin to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.