Marble Cake

I am at home today due to a Bank public holiday. Since the rest of the family were at school, daycare and work, I decided to bake a cake for afternoon tea. I love marble cake since young, especially the mix of colours.

Gert from My Kitchen Snippets taught me this new method of making marble cake, you don't need to swirl or mix before placing the cake batter in the oven. Thanks Gert!

Whilst I followed the final steps from Gert's recipe, I used my own recipe for the ingredients.

250gm butter, softened
270gm caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
3 eggs, beaten lightly
335gm (2 1/4 cups) self raising flour, sifted
180ml (3/4 cup) milk
2 tablespoons milk, extra
2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted
pink colouring

1. Preheat the oven to 160C degrees. Grease a deep 22cm round or deep 19cm square cake pan, line the base and sides with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter, vanilla extract and sugar in a medium bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
   
3. Add in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the sifted flour and milk, in two batches.
4. Divide mixture among three bowls, tint one mixture pink. Blend sifted cocoa with extra milk in cup; stir into second mixture.
5. (This is Gert's method). Drop 3 tablespoons of batter in the middle of the baking pan. Follow by the other colour mix on top of each other. Repeat the process with the rest of the batter. As Gert said, do not mix, swirl or stir or shake the pan. The batter will spread on its own.
6. Alternate method: Drop alternate spoonfuls of mixtures into pan. Pull a skewer backwards and forwards through the cake mixture.
7. Bake cake for about 1 hour or until golden brown. Stand cake in pan for 10 minutes, then turn onto rack to cool.