Marble cake recipe – a simple cake with no frosting needed, perfect for kids and adults alike.
I grew up eating marble cake. It’s almost a comfort food for me – warm, spongy marble cake fresh out of the oven served with cold milk or “Boost” when I get back from school. Ah, bliss. While a good chocolate cake is always on top of my favourite cakes list, marble cake was a very close second as a child.
Amma baked pretty often when I was a kid so I don’t remember us buying this from outside during the early years of my childhood. When baking a cake was in the plans, she would take out her cream pot and churn it make soft cloudy butter. I don’t think we ever bought butter during those days. Any butter that was in the fridge for a few days was made into golden ghee.
When I started college, a family friend opened up a bakery called Johns and Pauls. They sold the best marble cake in Kottayam at the time. Since they opened shop, I don’t think we’ve made this cake at home.
For other fabulous tried and tested cake recipes check out apple streusel cake, chocolate cake in microwave (in 7 minutes), tutti frutti cake, and also this pressure cooker cake recipe.
Marble Cake Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- A pinch of salt omit if using salted butter
- 1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 100 gm unsalted butter softened to room temperature
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup milk
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180C / 350F
- Grease a cake tin of choice with some butter. I used my silicone bundt pan which needs no greasing.
- Place the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla essence and milk in a bowl.
- Beat slowly with a whisk to moisten, then beat with an electric mixer (or vigorously by hand) at medium speed for about two minutes until the batter is smooth.
- Reserve three-fourth cup batter and pour the remainder into the cake pan.
- Stir cocoa into the three-fourth cup reserved batter. You can add cocoa to more of the batter depending on which flavour you want dominating.
- Drop the chocolate batter by the spoonfuls on top of the white batter.
- Using a knife, swirl the cocoa batter into the white batter to give it a marbled effect.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes in the preheated oven. Check with a skewer to see if the cake is done.
- Remove and transfer to a wire rack to cool.
- Marble cake is delicious without any frosting but a light dusting of icing sugar won’t hurt.
Notes
Few images of baking marble cake
Drop white and chocolate batters into the cake pan by the spoonfuls, alternating as you go
Swirl gently with a pointed knife or skewer
Bake until the crust is golden brown
I just tried out this recipe and it turned out really good. This recipe was great! And so simple too. Thank you so much, this is gonna be my go-to recipe for marble cake 🙂
thank you gayatri!
Can i use oil instead of butter??
sure you can but the texture of the cake will not be as soft as when you use butter.
Hi Nags, tried the cake.it ws superb.thanks fr the recipe
thanks a lot sneha
Hey nag!! I have tried biscotti n banana cake from ur cake receipes.. They were perfect .. I loved ur marble cake pic so much that I tried it, it’s yummy but the texture is a bit hard n moist at the bottom ..any idea why it turned out so I am new to baking so it would be helpful if you guide me on this..
Hello Lav, so glad you like my recipes 🙂 It’s hard to tell what went wrong in a baking recipe without knowing steps you followed or seeing what the issue is. It sounds like your baking temperature was low and the cake was not cooked properly? You also need to aerate the batter more during preparation to ensure it’s not dense when baked
This is my go to recipe every time I tbake- every single time I ry this it comes out perfect. thanks so much for putting this up! Palalvi
Hi Nags,
I sooo want to try this out. I don't have an oven with convection mode. Can I bake this using microwave mode? Please let me know.
Thanks 🙂
no you can't bake this cake in the microwave
Hi there. The current Food on Friday on Carole's Chatter is all about favourite foods from childhood. I do hope you link this lovely one in. This is the link . Please do pop back to check out some of the other links. Have a great week.
Tried it today. It came out really well…thanks for such a simple and nice recipe 🙂 keep posting!!!:)
Hi Nags ,
What can I substitute the egg with ? Looking forward to bake this for d'vali . Thanks
you can use any regular egg substitute for this cake. a quick google search should get you the exact measurements.
Tried it out today, turned out to be amazing! I did add some granulated sugar to the chocolate batter though, because I felt it was not as sweet as it should be. Turns out I was right.
Nevertheless, really easy and wonderful recipe. thankyou!