8 Apr 2009

walnut marble cake

I don't know why, but I just felt like baking a cake today. Initially I wasn't going to bake a cake since I was already exhausted from work...but mangaged to bake this delicious cake.

I used a recipe from the Australian Gourmet Traveller cookbook series. The book was dedicated to chocolate recipes. Most of the recipes had to use an ingredient called dutch process cocoa, but I had none of that so I just skipped those recipes. Instead I chose a recipe called "Chocolate and orange marble cake". However I had to substitute the ingredients since I didn't have any oranges since they were all used up in Qing Ming. Hence my "walnut marble cake"!

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walnut marble cake
adapted from Australian Gourmet Traveller - Chocolate (recipe book)
recipe adapted was "Chocolate and orange marble cake"
later edited by me

ingredients:
serves 8-10 (that's what the book said)
I made a 20 x 20 cm square cake
I got 9 pieces of cake
  • 150 grams margarine, softened
    (I don't use margarine from the fridge, but I beat it up with the mixer to make it soft)
  • 200 grams caster sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
  • 2 eggs
  • 300 grams self-raising flour, sifted
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp bicabonate soda
  • 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1/2 cup milk + 2 Tb extra
  • 100 grams cooking dark chocolate, melted
    (the original used 80 grams dark chocolate, I used 80 grams of dark chocolate and 20 grams of milk chocolate. I don't think it makes a difference.)
  • handful of unsalted walnuts, broken up (optional)
oven:170 -175 degrees Celsius
fan forced

method:
  1. Cream the margarine and sugar in a electric mixer until it turns pale yellow.
  2. Add beaten eggs and vanilla essence gradually and mix until combined after each addition.
  3. Sift flour, baking powder, bicarbonate soda and cream of tartar together.
  4. Fold in flour and 1/2 cup of milk alternately with a plastic spatula.
  5. Divide mixture into two portions.
    - Stir in melted chocolate to one portion.
    - Stir in the extra 2 Tb of milk to the other portion.
  6. Lightly grease a baking tin with oil. Line the tin with grease-proof paper and lightly grease the paper.
  7. Spoon heaped spoonfuls of mixture into the tin. (I did random blobs of vanilla and chocolate.)
  8. Smooth the surface with the spatula. Sprinkle crushed walnuts on top if desired.
  9. Bake for 40 minutes or until cake comes out clean when poked with a skewer.
***
You can see my cake has lots of holes because I poked it too much.
Heehee~ the pretty pattern. Looks more like stripes to me though.
This cake recipe is DEFINETELY a keeper. The texture of this cake is extremely soft and the walnuts on top gave it a crunchy texture. Hrmm, I wonder what it will taste like tommorow. I have 1/3 of the cake left.
Hrmm, I thought this cake would fail because I suck at making marble cake. I tried a few months back and it was horrible, but wanted to self-improve at the failed recipes. I also thought I put too much raising agents which will make the cake sink and I thought I mixed the chocolate mixture too much. ><
I'm really glad it turned out all right and so delicious tasting!!! ^_____^