Simple Double Chocolate Vanilla Marble Cake

Well, that break wasn't really expected - life sometimes gets in the way of blogging and I think a combination of post-Christmas readjusting to work and general busy-ness meant that January sped past before I knew what had happened. I'm sorry to have missed out on participating in all of the blog challenges I usually enter, but hopefully I'll be a bit more active this month.

To ease myself back into baking mode I decided to make something quick and easy, requiring no decoration but that also looked reasonably impressive. Marble cake fulfils all of these requirements and because I'm a chocolate fiend I decided to double up the chocolate goodness of the cake by adding chocolate chunks to the chocolate portion of the batter.

Double Chocolate Vanilla Marble Cake

Ingredients

175g butter, softened

175g white caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g full fat greek yogurt

3 eggs

175g self raising flour

100g chopped chocolate (I used 60% cocoa solids)

15g cocoa powder (approx...)

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease and line an 8"/20cm square cake tin with baking parchment.

- Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the vanilla, greek yogurt, eggs and flour and beat well to combine.

- Blob about half of the mixture into the tin in separated blobs.

- Add the cocoa powder and chocolate chunks to the remaining mixture in the mixing bowl. Beat to combine.

- Blob the chocolate batter into the spaces between the vanilla batter until the batter is all used up.

- Swirl the handle of a knife/fork/spoon through the mixture until it appears marbled (don't forget the corners!)

- Bake for about 40 minutes until risen, golden and springy and a cake tester comes out clean.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack before enjoying!

I do enjoy making marble cakes, they have the advantage of not really needing frosting/icing and this was a good one - the marbling went well and having the added chocolate chunks in the mixture made a nice contrast of texture and certainly enhanced the chocolate appeal of the cake! I use the handle of one of my soup spoons because it is wide enough to marble effectively - feel free to use your implement of choice. Not too taxing for a quick after-work midweek bake.