Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Loaf Cake recipe
Marble cake is one of the first things I learnt to bake. This is one cake that my mum regularly made using her ancient Kenwood Mixer and ancient decades-old electric oven. We used to get gifted large hampers of margarine by friends who owned a margarine factory, so this is what she used in all her baking, eek. But today, butter is the only way to go.
This marble loaf cake is perfect as a tea time treat with a fabulous loose leaf tea or packed as a snack for picnics.
About time I shared a recipe for the most basic marble cake. My version uses better ingredients than my mum’s old recipe, which results in a moist, delicious and healthier cake. I prefer to use organic butter, organic flour, high quality cocoa powder and a Madagascan vanilla extract or to be a bit extra, use the seeds from a vanilla pod. And I used the my Kenwood Kmix Mixer model which is quite a sexy, sleek British design.
How to make a marble cake
The basic recipe is for like any other butter cake recipe that you can tweak to make many other cakes.
It starts off by creaming the butter and sugar and mix until the butter mixture changes from a yellow colour to a lighter cream colour. Then slowly add the flour and milk alternatively, mix until combined but don’t beat it too vigorously as this will make the batter a bit heavy.
If mixing by hand, fold in the flour carefully to keep the air in the batter to get a lighter cake. When adding the milk, alternate it with the flour to make sure that both the ingredients are combined well, and not result in too liquid a cake mix.
You can create stunning marble cake designs with just these 2 coloured cake batters. One of the most creative designs I have seen is the leopard print and zebra pattern cakes. I have still not worked out how they do that even though I have watched the videos multiple times. I think it is something to do with the way they add the chocolate batter to the vanilla batter. I’ll have to give it a go.
My version is just a freehand marbling which results in the cake like this in the picture. Typically, you would add one spoonful of vanilla, then one of chocolate, and carry on until you run out of cake batter. I swirled the batters together at the top just to see how the marbling design would look.
Don’t worry about the two colours melding together. They won’t as you can see the finished marble cake has quite distinct colours.
You can choose to use a round tin to make a flat, round cake or use a loaf tin like this one. It is all a matter of preference. To serve, you can just serve it as it is or you can add icing, a chocolate fudge glaze or even a vanilla icing glaze. Feel free to decorate it for whatever occasion you are making it for.
Other popular cake recipes on the blog
- Gluten free spiced almond flour orange cake
- Bruce Bogtrotter’s Rich Chocolate Cake
- Semolina Sponge Cake with Almonds, Hazelnuts, Greek Yoghurt and Honey
Variations to the recipe
You can make a multi colour marble cake by adding one or more colour to the plain batter for example using red colouring to make a pink batter. I’ve seen a version of leopard print marble cake with 3 colours that is quite striking but I have no idea how they created that pattern.
If you make this cake recipe, do let me know and tag me on social media (Instagram/ Threads/ Bluesky) @eatcookexplore
Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Loaf Cake
Ingredients
- 175 g butter softened at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 175 g caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 175 g self-raising flour sifted to remove lumps
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder sifted
- 3 tbsp milk
- 2 teaspoon icing sugar for decoration
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Grease a deep 20cm /8-inch square cake pan or a 1 lb loaf tin. Line base and sides with baking paper or butter the tin and dust with a layer of flour.
- Start with the standard cake batter method or creaming the butter and sugar. Using your stand mixer, hand mixer or wooden spoon, beat the butter, vanilla extract and sugar until light and fluffy. You will see the colour change from a yellow to a lighther yellow.
- On a slower speed, beat in eggs, one at a time. Alternate the eggs with spoonfuls of the flour. Add spoonfuls of the milk as you go too. Beat for about 20 seconds after adding each. Go by eye to see that the ingredients have been incorporated before adding the next one.
- Divide the cake mixture into 2 bowls, a ratio of 2:1, vanilla to chocolate. Add the sifted cocoa powder into the smaller bowl and stir to combine. This is a rough guide as you can choose how much of each flavour you want in your cake. I find that half half results in too much chocolate.
- Spoon the mixture into your baking tin, alternate between the vanilla and chocolate. You can swirl the mixture with a butter knife to create a marbling effect. Continue until all the mixture has been used up.
- Bake the cake for about 45 minutes in the middle shelf. Use a skewer to test if the cake is done. It should come out clean and not have any cake batter. Then stand in the baking tin for 5 minutes to cool before turning out onto a wire rack.
- Dust with sifted icing sugar before serving or just serve it plain with a mug of tea.
- You can also use a 22cm (9-inch) round cake pan for this recipe. This cake will keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days. It can be frozen for up to 3 months.
Notes
- Make sure that the butter and eggs are at room temperature so cold ingredients don’t mix well.
- Reverse the ratio of vanilla to chocolate so that you end up with a more chocolaty marble cake
- Add a third colour with red food colouring so that you get a more unusual marble cake with streaks of pink throughout.
- In the UK, loaf pans come in sizes by weight ie 1lb or 2lb. This is however not standard and different brands have different volumes, so you need to measure each one.
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