Cake Series: Marble Cake

It's been a while since we've added to our cake series, so I thought I'd pick it up again with marble cake.  This is great for those who can't decide between vanilla and chocolate.  It is a really simple cake to make and makes a big impact, especially with kids.

I start with chocolate cake batter and vanilla cake batter.  For vanilla cake, I simply use the chocolate cake recipe here and substitute French vanilla cake mix and vanilla pudding.

I always line my pans with waxed paper (except when making apple streusel cake).  Kimiko shows you how to do this in the chocolate cake post.  This does take more work and time than oiling and flouring the pans, but it doesn't affect the flavor or texture.  Also, it doesn't crumb as much when you are frosting.

To get the marble effect, simply put alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla.  I usually do two layers of each.

One layer of vanilla, one layer of chocolate...

...followed by another layer of each.  (Can you tell someone
wanted to get their fingers into the batter?)  You'll want to fill the pan 1/2 to slightly more than 1/2 full.

Then you just swirl a spoon or other utensil around in the batter.  The key is to not swirl too much.  You don't want to mix the batters together.

Bake, torte, fill, and frost as desired.

This is one cake sliced into three layers.

To make cupcakes, marble your batters in a bowl before filling your cupcake pans.  The key here is to under swirl as the batter will continue to mix together as you are scooping it out.

Bake, fill, and frost as desired.

Sorry--they got eaten before I could get a "done" photo.

Need some filling ideas?  How about peanut butter filling, ganache, or caramel sauce.

For a fun kid cake, you could use all vanilla cake and add food coloring to get colored swirls.