Marble Cake

This last week has been a cake fest at home! It so happened that I had to bake 3 cakes for different reasons. Here's the first - marble cake!

Marble cakes are a combination of vanilla and chocolate cakes where the batter is roughly mixed, so you get cakes that look very artistic and are absolutely delicious.

This cake is for my son's school's christmas party. He is two and half years old and I think this combination cake is perfect for toddlers. They are inquisitive and curious, so this dual colour cake makes them really happy! It was my first time and the cake turned out really good, infact one of the best cakes I ever made I think!

For this you will need -

80 gms - Dark chocolate
150 gms - Flour
1 1/2 tspn - Baking Powder
1/4 tspn - Baking Soda
1/4 tspn - Salt
85 gms - Unsalted Butter
125 gms - Powdered White Sugar
2 Nos - Eggs
1 tspn - Vanilla Extract
40 ml - Plain Yoghurt
60 ml - Milk

A bundt pan. You can also make it in other pans, but this looks good and is slightly easier because of it's shape.

Method -

Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. This will help get a moist, fluffy cake!

Melt the chocolate on a double boiler or by microwaving. Double boiler means to keep a wide bottomed vessel with water directly on the stove and the chocolate in a smaller vessel that sits on top of the wide bottomed vessel. This ensures that direct heat doesn't hit the chocolate and it will melt only because of the steam rising from the water underneath. Keep the melted chocolate aside to cool.

Now sieve the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt thrice and keep aside. (Leave out the salt if you are using salted butter)

In another vessel take the butter and beat till light and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar to this and kepp on beating till it is light and the sugar incorporated. Then add the eggs, one at a time and beat till smooth and ribbony. Add the vanilla extract and beat some more. Now add the yoghurt ( I use home made yoghurt, am not sure how it will be if you use store bought, because the dahi you get in India has a different texture which is questionable according to me) Beat some more. Now the batter might look curdled, but it is fine. Once we add the other ingredients, it will be okay! Once you are done beating, now add the milk and the flour mixture alternatingly and start and end with the flour.
You don't have to beat these, just fold using a spatula. Make sure you have mixed the ingredients thoroughly and there is no flour lying at the bottom.

Now, take 2/3rds of the batter into another bowl. To the remaining 1/3rd, add the melted chocolate and mix really well.

Grease your bundt with butter and flour and now you can start filling it with the two batters. This is how you do it. Take one scoop of the vanilla and put it along the outer edge, then one scoop of chocolate and along the inner edge. Keep alternating till the pan is filled. It will look like this!

Now, to give it the marble effect, take a knife and lightly draw circles. Do not overmix the batter, then the layers won't be distinct.

 

Bake this at 180 deg C for 30 minutes. A fork inserted should come out clean, which means the cake is ready.

Devour and enjoy!

Just imagine serving these to children, they will go bonkers! Infact, I think serve this to anyone and they will become children :)