Soft Chocolate Marble Cake, Eggless

Soft Zebra Cake, Easy Recipe

A chocolate marble cake is a classic, show stopper kind of cake that looks much more difficult to make than it really is. This version, though made without eggs, is amazingly soft and tasty. It involves adding two kinds of batter, vanilla, and chocolate, alternately into the pan in circles positioned one on top of the other to form a stripe kind of design after baking it. Because of the distinct light and dark stripes in the cake it is more aptly called a zebra cake.

With Easter just around the corner, this chocolate marble cake would also make a nice and soft cake for Easter.

To make this cake with eggs, beat in 2 small eggs after whipping the oil and sugar, but reduce the milk in the recipe to half.

Some more soft and tasty cakes you might like to check out include my hot milk cake, mawa cake without having to make or buy mawa, and my delicious rose milk cake.

Ingredients

1 cup (125g) maida (all-purpose flour)

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

½ cup + 1 tbsp warm milk

1 tsp white vinegar

½ cup (120 ml) oil

½ cup (105g) sugar (measure, then powder)

¼ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp milk powder

1 ½ tbsp cocoa powder

3 tsp hot water

Bake in a 6″ round pan.

Bake at 160C for around 35 minutes.

Procedure

1. Prepare the baking pan by oiling and dusting the sides with maida and lining the bottom with parchment paper.
2. Stir the vinegar into the warm milk, cover it, and set it aside for around 10 – 15 minutes. (It will split and get converted into buttermilk.)
3. Sift the maida, baking powder and baking soda.
4. Transfer the oil to a mixing bowl. Add the powdered sugar to it and whip it well for around a minute or two with a fork or whisk.
5. Pour in the buttermilk and add the vanilla extract and mix everything again well.
6. Fold in the flour mixture with a spatula in two parts. Mix till the batter is free from lumps.
7. Mix in the milk powder. It should now be a lump-free batter that falls in ribbons. It shouldn’t be too thin or runny. And neither too thick. Adjust the consistency by adding in a tsp or two of milk or flour.
8. Divide the batter into two more or less equal parts.
9. Add the hot water to the cocoa powder and mix it to form a smooth paste. Stir this into half of the batter. Mix well.
10. Add 2 tbsp of the vanilla batter in the centre of the prepared cake pan. Tap the pan to help the batter spread a little. Add 2 tbsp of the chocolate batter on top of the vanilla batter and tap the pan lightly again. Continue adding the vanilla and chocolate batters alternately to the cake pan, adding a little less of each towards the end, till both the batters are used up. Tap the pan on the work surface finally a few times to release any air bubbles and level the top of the batter.
11. Make a sort of flower design on the top of the cake using a skewer or toothpick, dipping it around ½” into the batter as you move it through it.
12. Bake the cake at 160 C (around 325F) for about 35 to 40 minutes till a skewer inserted into it comes out clean.
13. Take the cake pan out of the oven and after around 30 minutes run a knife around the edges of the cake and then upturn it on a wire rack, Let the cake cool for another 15-20 minutes before upturning it on a plate and slicing it.

Enjoy!