Marble cake (or Tiger cake from Food52)

We got my daughter a mobile phone recently and I love texting with her during the day. Couple of days ago she started texting me a list of her favorite food that she would like me to cook or bake. The list started with borlotti beans which is her favorite and continued with lentil balls, homemade pizza, mashed peas (without mint), marble cake, lemon and poppy seed cake, meatballs, pasta with courgettes, chocolate donuts, artichokes and so on and on. It’s a long list.

So yesterday I wanted to start the list with baking the marble cake. She was going on a playdate next day and wanted to take the cake to her friend for the playdate.

I usually follow the tiger cake recipe from food52 website. But the recipe is not available anymore as Food52.com is not available in Europe due to data protection. Luckily I managed to see the recipe from the cached version of the website.

Another problem was we were at a day out at Stonehenge yesterday and by the time we came back all the shops were closed, there was only 2 eggs left at home and no milk at all.

So I had to tweak the recipe to what we had available at home. Previously when I made the cake it was quite large for my usual cake dish so I wanted to reduce the quantities anyway.

I like using my Pyrex glass loaf dish (which is 28x11x8cm) for making cakes as it is much slimmer than the usual loaf tins and I like it for that reason.

I have made the cake using this glass loaf dish but would be ok on a usual 1 lb loaf tin as well.

So here is the recipe that came out in the end.

Ingredients

12 gr natural cocoa powder

50 gr caster sugar

50ml water

200 gr plain flour

1 teaspoons baking powder

200 gr caster sugar

150ml extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

2 eggs

150ml yogurt

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees.

2. Spray a 28 x 11 cm Pyrex glass loaf dish with oil spray and dust it with flour.

3. Mix the cocoa, sugar and water in a bowl until well blended

4. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl.

5. Place the caster sugar, olive oil, vanilla, salt and pepper in the bowl of an electric mixer with the whisk attachment in place and whisk on medium-high speed until everything is well combined then add eggs one at a time. Continue to beat until mixture is thick and pale, 3-5 minutes.

6. While the mixer is working add one third of the flour mixture, beat on low speed until blended. Add half of the yogurt and another third of the flour and beat until it is blended. Add remaining yogurt and flour and continue to beat until all incorporated.

7. Add roughly half of the batter to the cocoa mixture and stir with a hand whisk until blended.

8. Pour one-third of the plain batter into the prepared pan and top with one third of the chocolate batter. Repeat with the remaining batters. No need to do the marbling effect as it happens during baking.

9. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

10. Set aside to cool for 30 minutes before removing from the pan. Leave to come to room temperature before serving.