Marble Cake To gently swirl one food into another. Marbling is usually done with light and dark batters for cakes or cookies.
A marble cake is a cake with a streaked or mottled appearance (like marble) achieved by very lightly blending light and dark
batter. It can be a mixture of
vanilla and
chocolate cake, in which case it is mainly vanilla, with streaks of chocolate. Other possibilities are
strawberry or other fruit flavors, or (particularly in marbled coffee cakes)
cinnamon and/or other spices.
The first print references to marble cake begin appearing in the last quarter of the 19th century. One popular variation of this recipe during Victorian times was “Harlequin cake,” which was baked with checkerboard patterns. Early recipes used
molasses and spices to achieve the dark-colored batter.
