Marble Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

If given the choice between chocolate and vanilla, why not choose both?

I'll tell you guys, I'm really enjoying baking out of this cookbook! I'll tell you a secret if you promise not to judge me...

The choices for the February Cake Slice Baker's bake were Fig and Orange Cake, Orange Marmalade Loaf with Coconut Topping, and Marble Cake.

And I made all three of them.

I'm telling you, these recipes are dangerous. It is so easy to whoop up a dessert on the fly.

Too easy.

I really enjoyed all three of the cakes. The Fig and Orange cake gave me Mediterranean vibes, and I love marmalade in anything. Not everyone likes marmalade and coconut the way that I do, and people seem to either love or hate figs.

But Marble Cake is something everyone can agree on. Check out the links at the bottom of the post to see what the other lovely bakers made!

When my mom was teaching me how to bake, she taught me to follow the recipe exactly the first time you make it. If you start playing fast and loose with a recipe that you don't know, you won't have a baseline for how it is meant to come out. After you are familiar with the recipe, you can change it up and make it your own.

Some recipes (like brownies) are super forgiving and you can hardly mess them up.

Other recipes (like macarons) will take your lunch money and give you a wedgie if you deviate from the directions even slightly. Macarons are jerks.

I have noticed with all the recipes in Little Everyday Cakes that the author specifies that the milk and eggs need to be at room temperature. In general, that is good baking advice. Eggs get more volume when they are not straight out of the refrigerator.* And cold liquid can cause butter to not emulsify and make your cake's texture cornbread-y

This little 8x8 cake has NINE tablespoons of butter, so the texture could definitely be effected by ingredient temperature. But all that butter makes it rich and (not surprisingly) very buttery. So I'd recommend the room temp ingredients on this one.

My Marble Cake came together very easily with a fairly ingenious method to bake both batters in one bowl. My only issue was that I ended up baking the cake for close to 40 minutes before the center was set when the recipe said 20 minutes. My cake was much "fluffier" than the picture in the book--I'd like to experiment and see if I can get it a little more like a brownie.

It's a simple cake, but we ate it up and thoroughly enjoyed it. My 6 year old son told me, "Maybe we could have some of that brown and white cake for breakfast? That would be good."

And it was.

So give this Marble Cake a try! It's easy, buttery, vanilla-y, and chocolatey. Best of ~~both~~ all worlds.

*Pro tip: you can take the eggs out of the fridge and put them in a bowl of hot tap water to quickly bring them to room temp. Just let them sit in the water for 5 minutes, and they'll be ready to go.

Marble Cake

from Little Everyday Cakes by Candace Floyd

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

9 T softened butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk, room temp

3/4 cup whole milk, room temp

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

3 T unsweetened cocoa powder

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 x 8 square cake pan, line with parchment, and dust with flour.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

3. Using a mixer, beat the butter at medium high until creamy. Add the sugar and beat until pale and fluffy (about 4 minutes). Add the eggs and yolk one at a time, beating well after each addition.

4. Add all of the flour mix and all but one tablespoon of the milk, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix until *just* incorporated. Mix in the vanilla.

5. Spoon five separate blobs of the batter into the prepared pan. With the remaining batter, add the reserved tablespoon of milk and the cocoa powder. Spoon the chocolate batter in between the vanilla. With a butter knife, swirl the batters together, reaching all the way to the bottom.

6. Bake the cake 20-25 (or 35!) minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in the pan.

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is Little Everyday Cakes by Candace Floyd. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes. If you have a blog and are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The Cake Slice Bakers also have a new Facebook group called The Cake Slice Bakers and Friends. This group is perfect for those who do not have a blog but want to join in the fun and bake through this book.