A reader recently asked me if I had a recipe for marble cake, and I was (quietly, politely) aghast. People eat it...by choice? I'm sorry if it's your favorite and now we cannot be friends, but I'd only experienced it in settings where it was just one step above no cake at all, usually dry and managing to taste like neither chocolate nor vanilla. In life, but in cake baking especially, I think we should all aspire to do one thing really well before making things more complicated. I'm so glad she pressed me, because it led me to read about the cake's origins in Germany, where it is known asMarmorkuchen, a deeply beloved birthday standard. This inspired me to do some fancy fractions with a favorite rich chocolate cake to divide it into vanilla and dark-chocolate parts. It was a very good cake, but this one is even better, thanks to a friend and fellow food blogger, Luisa Weiss—who lives in Berlin and wroteClassic German Baking, a book no baker should miss—who, from a neighbor, learned a trick of using melted white chocolate in the vanilla portion instead of leaving it plain. But don't run away if you don't like white chocolate. Here, it adds a complex toastiness, and makes a luxurious textural match for the chocolate swirls—not something you endure just to get to them.
Ingredients
Makes 12–16 servings
Cake:
To finish:
Step 1
Heat the oven to 350°F. Coat the inside of a Bundt pan with nonstick spray, or butter and flour every nook and cranny well. Cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the bowl between additions. Beat in the vanilla and sour cream until smooth, then add the milk. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over batter, and mix until thoroughly combined. Add 2 cups of the flour to the batter, and mix until just combined.
Step 2
Scoop half of the batter—you can eyeball it—into a separate bowl, and stir the melted white chocolate into it until fully combined; then stir in 1/3 cup flour.
Step 3
Stir the cocoa powder and melted dark chocolate into the other half of batter.
Step 4
Drop or dot large spoonfuls of the white chocolate batter into the bottom of your prepared cake pan. Drop or dot large spoonfuls of the dark chocolate batter over that, checkerboarding it a little. Continue until all the batter is used. Use a skewer to marble the batters together in figure-8 motions.
Step 5
Bake the cake until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the center comes out batter-free, 40 to 50 minutes.
Step 6
Let cool completely in the pan on a cooling rack, then invert onto a cake plate.
To finish:
Step 7
Heat the cream and chocolate together, and stir until just melted. Spoon over the fully cooled cake, and use the back of a spoon to nudge the drippings down in places. Refrigerate cake to set the chocolate coating; leftovers keep best in the fridge as well.
Leave a Review
Reviews (8)
Back to TopThis is such a delicious, moist coffee cake! It's great with the chocolate glaze, but I think it would be just as delicious without.
Anonymous
7/15/2022
Made the cake exactly as written, as I love to cook but am not much of a baker. It was a royal pain ( a big patchke) and then the batter looked weird. I was going to dump it, but figured I made it so I might as well bake it. Lo and behold, the cake was delicious. Got lots of compliments and I loved it. When I am feeling ambitious, I will make it again.
sandikram
Montreal, Canada
12/13/2020
Very tasty, rich cake. Now I’d love to see the all chocolate version! This is by far the best marble cake recipe I’ve tried! Not too messy and worth the extra effort!
dbpearl
Long Bea, Ca
8/12/2020
I followed the recipe exactly and it was absolutely delicious! Moist, chocolaty, and beautiful. I didn't swirl the batter at all, just alternated blobs of dark and white chocolate into a lovely bundt pan and it looked marbled! This is the second time I've made it and the bittersweet chocolate glaze is perfectly rich! I did not refrigerate it at all. I didn't feel like it required too many bowls or steps. Worth it!
eleanor23
Pleasanton, CA
1/2/2020
Like MightyMom2, I made this in response to a birthday request. It came out perfectly, looking just like the picture and tasting rich, moist, and flavorful. I thought I'd ruined it when I added the 1.5 cups of milk and could not get it well incorporated into the batter. It looked like I had drowned my lovely creamed-butter mixture by adding way too much milk. I wondered, had the amount been a typo? But it came together in the end. Just follow the recipe to a T and you'll be fine. The trick to making it look marbled, not just streaky brown, is to be minimal with the swirling after the scoops of batter have been placed in the pan. I did just one pass around the circumference, then maybe 6 passes from the center to the outer walls of the pan. Do more, and you'll cross the line from marbling to mixing. I had to bake it about 75 minutes to get my toothpick out clean. Despite the success, I'll never make this cake again! I found it to be a giant pain -- lots of steps, weighing, scooping dots of batter one by one ... and so. many. bowls. I had a giant sinkful of dishes to do once I got the cake into the oven. Then more weighing and chopping of chocolate for the ganache ... another pan ... I'm an experienced baker but I was over it.
cdooley
Dallas, TX
7/15/2018
I made this cake as part of my Christmas platter of cookies that I gift to my neighbors. One of my neighbors, who used to own a restaurant, just raved about it! She said she cut thin slices off the large piece I gave her and savored it for several days. She said it stayed moist and she did not refrigerate it. My son, the chocoholic, thought this marble bundt cake was the best I had made yet. I over mixed the batter so the marbling didn't come out like the picture but I'll do better next time! This recipe is a keeper and will be in my dessert rotation from now on.
Anonymous
portland, OR
1/6/2018
I followed the recipe to the T and the cake came out perfect. It’s moist with a crunchy chocolate layer covering it. I kept it in the fridge and it tastes equally good the next day for breakfast. The marbling looks just like in the picture. This recipe is a keeper.
silvia_v
Belmont, MA
12/26/2017
My son asked for a marble cake for his birthday. This was fun to make and tasted good. My only complaint is that there was much more dark chocolate in the marbling than white chocolate. It didn’t look so much like a marble cake as a chocolate cake with some light parts in it. I found that strange, as it seemed the batters were equal. I think the author is right about questioning that people eat it by choice. Even though everyone said it was good, the leftover cake sat mostly uneaten, and I ended up throwing away nearly half.
mightymom2
Yorba Linda, CA
11/29/2017
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