30 | May | 2013 | Words and Herbs

Last Sunday I found it hard to believe it was late May: 7°Celsius (45°F), Dull, Rainy and Windy (yes, with capital letters!). Luckily I had cut some of my early peony flowers a couple of days earlier before they got spoilt.

The perfect activity for such a day, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is to go into the kitchen, tie on a pinny, turn on the oven, and bake a cake!

MARBLE CAKE

After looking through several marble cake recipes, mostly German (Marmorkuchen), I decided to just try out my own. And it worked first time! This is a German classic and was requested a while back by my Man of Many Talents… Really tasty and soft, just the right proportion of chocolate, and nice and moist from adding yoghurt to the batter.

175g (1 and 1/2 sticks) soft butter
175g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g (2 cups) SR flour
2 tbsps cocoa powder
150g (2/3 cup) plain yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and flour either a 1lb/500g loaf tin and 2 mini Gugelhupf moulds, or a slightly larger loaf tin.

Beat the butter with an electric mixer until smooth, then add the sugar and continue mixing until creamy. Slowly beat in the eggs, adding a little of the flour if it curdles, and the vanilla extract. Sift in the flour and gently fold in, and finally stir in the yoghurt very carefully. Now spoon 2/3 of the vanilla batter into your tin(s). Add the cocoa to the remaining third and mix in well. Spoon the cocoa batter over the top of the vanilla batter. Using a knife, swirl through the mixture 3 or 4 times in a figure of eight motion. I didn’t bother with this for the mini Gugelhupf cakes, but for a round tin or loaf tin the effect is nice.

Bake for 45-50 minutes. (The mini Gugelhupf moulds only needed about 20 minutes.)

After removing from the oven, wait 5 minutes, and then turn out the cakes to cool on a rack.