Marble Cake
After putting together the mixture for Loaf Cake, take out one-half and add to this a half teaspoonful each of ground clove, cinnamon and mace. Then put the plain and the spiced batter into the cake pan in alternating tablespoonfuls, and finish as directed.
A variation recipe rather than a standalone one: it depends entirely on the book's Loaf Cake, a creamed butter-or-shortening cake baked in a loaf or tube pan. A few points about the spicing and the marbling are worth having.
- You need the base recipeThe quantities live in the Loaf Cake entry, so this page gives no flour, sugar or egg amounts; the half-teaspoon each of clove, cinnamon and mace is all the spicing the variation adds.
- "Finish as directed" means the ovenThe base recipe's instructions govern; this page gives no temperature, time or pan preparation, so the book's own Loaf Cake directions are the only guide.
- Snowdrift is the shorteningThe fat -- If the base recipe calls for a vegetable shortening, any modern shortening behaves much the same way; butter gives more flavour but a slightly firmer, less tender crumb.
- MaceMace is the outer covering (aril) of the nutmeg seed, usually described as more delicate than nutmeg itself. It is still sold ground, and grated nutmeg, used sparingly, is the nearest substitute.
- Fold the spices in, do not beat themSift the three spices together and fold them into the reserved half of the batter with as few strokes as possible. Beating at this stage knocks out the air the creaming built and leaves the dark half denser than the light, so the layers sink unevenly.
- The marblingAlternating tablespoonfuls, dropped in a checkerboard and each layer offset from the one below, gives the pattern on their own. If you want visible swirls, draw a knife or skewer through once in a figure of eight; more than that and the two batters blend to a uniform tan.
- Colour contrastGround spices alone tint the batter only lightly beige; some other marble cakes darken the second half with molasses, brown sugar or cocoa, but this one does not. Expect a subtle marble, not a black-and-white one.
- YieldA loaf cake of this type cuts into roughly 10 to 12 slices and keeps a few days well wrapped.
Marble cake reached American kitchens through nineteenth-century German-American baking, where a light and a dark batter were layered to make Marmorkuchen; early English-language versions usually darkened the second batter with molasses and spice rather than chocolate. Clove, cinnamon and mace were among the spice combinations American bakers of the period drew on, alongside nutmeg and allspice, and cookbooks could name them in one breath.