Marble Cake II
Make plain cake, saving out one-third of batter and adding to it 1 1/2 squares melted unsweetened chocolate. This chocolate batter is then dropped by spoonfuls into the white batter after it is put into the pan.
A variation rather than a standalone formula: it assumes you have the book's plain cake batter already mixed. The only real technique here is the marbling, and it is easy to overdo.
- You need the base recipe firstThis entry is a rider on the "plain cake" given earlier in the cake chapter; you must turn to that recipe for the batter. Any butter cake batter of similar stiffness will behave the same way.
- Squares of chocolateA "square" of unsweetened chocolate is one ounce, so 1 1/2 squares is 1 1/2 oz, about 40 g. Modern baking bars are often scored in half-ounce or 1-oz sections; weigh rather than count.
- Melt gently and cool slightlyMelted chocolate stirred into cold batter will seize into flecks. Melt over hot water, let it cool to just warm, then fold it into the reserved third.
- The chocolate third will be stifferUnsweetened chocolate has no sugar and plenty of cocoa solids, so that portion tightens up. A tablespoon of milk loosens it enough to drop cleanly from a spoon.
- Marbling with restraintThe recipe asks only that the dark batter be dropped in spoonfuls over the white in the pan. If you swirl at all, a few slow strokes with a knife are enough; more than that and the two batters blend to a uniform brown.
- Pan and ovenThe recipe gives no pan, temperature or time; follow the base plain cake for those. A greased tube pan or two 8-inch layers will take this quantity, baked until a tester comes out clean.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; a tube pan of this quantity would give roughly 10 to 12 servings.
Marble cake in nineteenth-century American cookbooks was usually made light and dark with molasses and spice, not chocolate — the "dark part" recipes call for brown sugar, molasses, cinnamon, cloves and sometimes sour milk with saleratus. The chocolate version, as here, plausibly belongs to the period after cheap, reliably packaged baking chocolate reached grocery shelves in standard one-ounce squares, which would explain why the amount is given in squares rather than by weight. That this appears as "Marble Cake II," a short paragraph hanging off a plain cake, is characteristic of the general cookbooks of the period: one thoroughly tested base batter, then a long tail of variations built on the same foundation.