Mocha Marble Cake Recipe

So you want to bake a cake but can't decide between vanilla or chocolate. Both options are delicious and both are classic crowd-pleasers, which can make it hard to choose between one flavor and the other. So why not have the best of both worlds, and make this mocha marble cake instead? Created by recipe developer Jennine Rye, this sweet treat is made from vanilla cake batter that has a chocolate-coffee batter swirled throughout, producing a beautifully moist and velvety loaf cake that everyone will be sure to love.

Best of all, this cake doesn't take any longer to make than an ordinary cake as you make one batter in a bowl and then portion it out, mixing cocoa powder and coffee into some of the ready-mixed batter. It really couldn't be simpler and depending on how you choose to swirl your batters together, each cake will be entirely beautifully individual.

To begin this mocha marble cake, you will want to gather the ingredients. You will need butter, ready-made and cooled espresso, flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, buttermilk, and cocoa powder.

If you are unable to find buttermilk, or simply haven't got any at home but want to get baking, there are plenty of buttermilk substitutes you can use such as milk and lemon juice or milk and vinegar.

To prepare the cake batter, first you will want to cream the butter and sugar together. To do this, place both ingredients into a stand mixer and then allow them to be beaten for 3 to 4 minutes. It can seem like a long time, but the length of time you beat the butter and sugar together at the start of the recipe will directly impact the lightness and fluffiness of the resulting sponge, as creaming these ingredients for longer introduces more air to the batter.

Once the butter and sugar mixture is light and fluffy, it is time to mix in the eggs one at a time, along with the vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, thoroughly whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt, before adding half of the dry ingredients to the main bowl. Mix the flour into the sugar, butter, and egg mixture until it is just combined, before adding the buttermilk to the bowl and mixing that in as well. Finally, add the remaining flour and fold it in until everything is just combined to form a cake batter.

To create the mocha batter for your mocha marble cake, add the cooled espresso and the cocoa powder to a bowl and mix them together to form a loose paste. Then, scoop some of the finished cake batter from the big mixing bowl into the bowl with the mocha mixture, and gently fold the ingredients together until your mocha cake batter has formed. You are now ready to create the marble cake.

The best trick for creating perfectly marbled cakes is to not overdo it. It can be easy to get carried away swirling the batters together, but less is actually more:The less you actually agitate the batters, the cleaner the resulting distinction between the colors, giving you a beautiful and strikingly contrasted marble loaf. To marble your cake, add alternating scoops of the vanilla and mocha cake batters to the prepared loaf tin until both of the batters are used up. Then, gently swirl the batters together with a knife or a skewer, using your judgment to decide when to stop. Then place the loaf cake into the oven to bake for 50 minutes.

When the cake has risen and a skewer inserted into the sponge comes out clean, the marble cake is ready. Allow the cake to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, before gently removing it and setting it on a wire rack to cool. As much as it is tempting to slice into your mocha marble cake to see will want to wait for the cake to cool completely before cutting and serving, as it will be easier to slice and will not fall apart. Store your cake at room temperature in an airtight container.