Marble Cake

I'm getting all cocky now, tweaking a recipe out of a cookbook the first time I make it.  It wasn't a hard decision.  The recipe tells you the cake is going to be cracked, so there's obviously something wrong with it.  I subbed in half cake flour to reduce the gluten content and used whole milk instead of evaporated for water:milk solids ratio.

There was a lot of math in this one.  1/3 cake in a 6" pan when I didn't want to make a 9", argh.  Then I made it again, using margarine instead of butter and a regular aluminum pan instead of aluminum springform.  The butter one is on the left, margarine on the right.  The butter cake was more dense, but they both ended up the same height after being trimmed flat.  They both also developed the bubbles on top that you can see in the top photo, which were trimmed off for layering.  If you're not going to cut, fill, and frost, they'll be visible.

Neither of the cakes domed as much as I was expecting, though the margarine one domed more.  I'm attributing this to the cake pan band.  The photo in the Bible had a significant dome, which you would expect from a 9" diameter cake.  The outside is bound to bake much faster than the middle without something to even out the heat.  The original recipe has you dusting the top with powdered sugar and serving it coffee-cake style, so that was never something the author cared about.  Or maybe that was their solution to a recipe they couldn't fix.

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1-1/4 C sugar
1/4 C water
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 C butter (one stick), softened
1 C AP flour
1 C Cake flour
3/4 C whole milk
3 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

1.  Grease a 9" springform pan, line with wax paper, and grease again.  Preheat oven to 350º.

2.  Over very low heat, melt chocolate with water and 1/4 C sugar.  This can be done in short bursts in the microwave or on the stove.  Stir in vanilla and set aside to cool a bit while you make the cake batter.

3.  In a mixing bowl, combine both flours, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.  Add butter, eggs, and milk.  Beat at low speed until combined, scraping bowl.  Beat on high for 5 minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally.

4.  Remove 2-1/2 C batter.  This is your white cake.  Beat chocolate mixture into the remaining batter.

5.  Spoon alternate amounts of batter into cake pan.  At some point, I gave up and just started scraping it out of the bowls.  With a knife or toothpick, draw lines down the batter to form the feather pattern.

6.  Bake 55 to 60 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean and it's just starting to look browned.  If you didn't use a cake band, the top will be cracked.

7.  Cool in pan for 10 minutes on a rack.  Remove sides of pan and cool for 5 more minutes before trying to remove bottom and wax paper.  The two different flavors sometimes try to come apart from each other when you peel it.

8.  Once completely cooled, cake can be frozen.  To serve, either trim and frost or sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve "naked".

Serves 12

Difficulty rating  :)