Marble cake: the pattern takes one movement of a skewer
Marble cake usually goes wrong at the very last stage: swirling the pattern. The longer anyone stirs with a skewer, the more the two batters merge, until all that is left is a uniform greyish colour. The pattern comes from one single spiral movement — and that is enough. Beyond that it all comes down to temperature: butter and eggs must come from the counter, not the fridge, because cold eggs beaten into creamed butter make it curdle into lumps.
Your own work in that: 20 min.
- Batter 20 min
- Baking 50 min
- Cooling 15 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneCream the butter and sugar
Beat the soft butter with both sugars 6 minutes, until it pales noticeably and gains volume. This is not mixing: you are driving air into the butter, and that air, with the baking powder, is what lifts the cake.
Ingredients: 250 g butter · 200 g sugar · 4 pcs eggs · 300 g plain flour · 2 tsp baking powder · 120 ml milk · 2 tbsp vanilla sugar · ½ tsp salt
TipButter straight from the fridge will not cream — it crumbles. Leave it out for two hours, or cut it into thin slices to bring it to temperature in a quarter of an hour.
Six minutes, until pale and fluffyAdd the eggs one at a time
Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing 30 seconds after each. If the mixture starts to look curdled, add a spoon of flour from the weighed portion and keep beating — it comes back smooth.
One egg at a time, thirty seconds eachFold in flour alternating with milk
Mix the flour with the baking powder and salt. Add it to the batter alternating with the milk, in three additions, mixing on the lowest speed only until combined. Overmixing develops gluten and the cake comes out heavy and rubbery.
Ingredients: 250 g butter · 200 g sugar · 4 pcs eggs · 300 g plain flour · 2 tsp baking powder · 120 ml milk · 2 tbsp vanilla sugar · ½ tsp salt
Divide and colour with cocoa
Divide the batter in half. To one half add the cocoa slaked with three tablespoons of milk and stir to an even dark colour. Slaking the cocoa first prevents lumps that would never break up in a thick batter.
Ingredients: 3 tbsp cocoa · 3 tbsp milk
Cocoa into milk first, then into the batterAlternate spoonfuls, then one swirl
Heat the oven to 175 °C. Grease a 30 cm loaf tin or bundt tin with butter and dust with breadcrumbs. Spoon in the batter light, dark, light, dark, in layers. Finally draw a skewer through in one spiral from the edge to the middle and stop. More movements give grey rather than a pattern.
Ingredients: 2 tbsp icing sugar · 20 g butter · 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
TipFor a bolder marble, use larger spoonfuls and pull the skewer along the tin just twice, without stirring across at all.
One spiral with a skewer and no moreBake fifty minutes
Bake 50 minutes at 175 °C in a bundt tin with a central tube; in a loaf tin usually 5–8 minutes longer. Test with a skewer at the thickest point: it should come out with moist crumbs, neither wet nor completely dry. Cool in the tin 15 minutes, then turn onto a rack and dust with icing sugar once completely cool.
A skewer with moist crumbs, not dry
Before you start
Why cakes sink
The usual culprits: opening the oven before the 35th minute, too much baking powder (two teaspoons is plenty for 300 g of flour), or too short a bake. A sunken middle is usually the last of these.
With a glaze
100 g of dark chocolate melted with 50 ml of cream, poured over the cooled cake. Glaze only when it is completely cold — on a warm cake the glaze runs onto the counter.
How long it stays fresh
Three days in a sealed container, thanks to all that butter. On the fourth it is best griddled in a pan with a little butter — it sounds odd and tastes excellent.
The tin matters
A classic bundt tin with a funnel bakes more evenly than a loaf tin, since heat reaches the middle too. In a loaf tin add 5–8 minutes and watch the skewer.
