Mini Marble Cakes

Once I realise what I want to bake, I tend to become quite stubbornly specific about that idea. I have to hunt through the indexes of cookbooks, trying to see if they have the recipe I have in mind. Unsurprisingly, today I didn’t find a specific recipe for mini marble loaf cakes that I wanted. Guess I'll just have to write my own book one day! The inspiration came from a link I’d bookmarked, but on closer inspection that used 3 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks and I didn’t want the faff of using up the egg whites. Many of the marble cakes I saw seemed quite dry or difficult to downsize to my little batch. In the end, I heavily adapted a Mary Berry recipe (how can you go wrong?) and ended up with exactly what I’d wanted.I’ve wanted to make a marble cake for a long time and it seemed the perfect way to use up odds and ends of chocolate. Using mini loaf pans made the marbling process a little bit more fiddly, but it was worth it in the end. The chocolate cake part is made using cocoa powder and dark chocolate chips, which means it isn’t too sweet against the light vanilla cake. The cakes are probably a little bit bigger than a cupcake (although some shop-bought cupcakes can be huge!) but seeing as they don’t have any icing they are not too rich and are the perfect teatime treat! I’d definitely like to experiment further with marble cakes when I have more ingredients in the house – a chocolate orange version, a coffee version, a version with dried fruit…so many ideas!

Mini Marble Cakes, adapted from a Marble Traybake recipe from Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book

Ingredients: 110g butter
110g caster sugar
140g self-raising flour
1tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1tbsp cocoa powder
1tbsp hot water
50g dark chocolate, chopped
50g white chocolate, chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C. Line 6 mini loaf tins with a strip of greaseproof paper.

2. Put the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, eggs and milk in a food processor and beat until everything is well blended together.

3. Measure out half the cake mixture into another bowl. Add the vanilla essence and white chocolate chunks to the remaining mix in the food processor and stir to incorporate.

4. Mix the cocoa powder and hot water to a paste in a small bowl, then add to the other half of cake mixture along with the dark chocolate chunks.

5. Place a small teaspoonful of vanilla mixture into the bottom of each loaf tin, with a spoonful of chocolate mixture next to it. Layer up the two mixes in the tins, with alternating mixes on top of each other. Briefly marble with a thin cake skewer.

6. Bake for around 15-20minutes, until risen and set in the centre. Leave to cool before running round the edges of each tin with a knife and turning out.