Marbled chocolate and vanilla bundt cake

A quick and easy cake for a worknight to deal with a surfeit of eggs. I had been wondering all day what to bake when I arrived home. I knew it needed to be something fairly quick and easy - I generally don't have a lot of energy left by the evening, and preferably something that would not require decoration to look good. (Although even things that could really do with some sprucing up often go into work as is - no one seems to mind that their cakes don't look amazing!)

Luckily, Suelle at Mainly Baking had just posted a chocolate orange cake, with a delicious looking marbled appearance. It was just the inspiration I needed to make this marbled cake. Without the time to look for a novel recipe, this is just my standard cake recipe. As I mentioned, the primary purpose was to use up eggs so I decided to dust off my bundt tin as it takes quite a large capacity without taking an age for the cake to bake. A half used packet of white chocolate also caught my eye, so chopped and in it went!

Marbled chocolate and vanilla bundt cake

Ingredients

225g butter, softened (I love my microwave!)

225g caster sugar

4 eggs

225g self raising flour

4 tbsp cocoa powder

4 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g white chocolate, chopped

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease your bundt tin well.

- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the eggs and flour and beat well to combine (I know that I should add the eggs first, one at a time, beating well after each addition, but these were fridge cold, and I never have any luck when it comes to cake batters curdling. To avoid curdling, I add the flour and eggs at the same time. My palate isn't sophisticated enough to be able to spot any loss of texture suffered by using my cowboy methods!).

- Spoon half of the mixture into a small bowl, add the vanilla and mix it in well.

- To the remaining mixture, sift in 4 tbsp cocoa powder and then add 4 tbsp milk; beat well to combine then add the chopped white chocolate.

- Dollop alternate blobs of mixture into the tin, then swirl with the back of a table knife. You don't want anything too narrow or too wide.

- Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a cake tester inserted comes out clean.

- Leave to cool in the tin for a while. I didn't and it's quite a delicate cake.

Decoration was too much effort for a work night, so I left it plain. I'm sure a chocolate glaze drizzled over it would have been very well received too.

As you can see, I was a little cack-handed getting the cake out of the tin, so it cracked, but this didn't matter when it was all sliced up and ready to eat! I was pleased with my marbling this time - it seems to be a bit hit and miss but this was a hit occasion! Very well received - I had thought that there would be some left as a few of my colleagues were away on Friday, but never fear, it all disappeared. Good and moist, with a light texture and chocolate flavour, you can just see a little piece of white chocolate peeping out in the top picture. A reliable favourite!