"Neapolitan" Marble Cake

It was a colleague’s last day at work before moving abroad this week I volunteered to make a cake. He had mentioned previously that rainbow cakes were pretty cool so I went on that theme. However I didn’t have the high powered food colourings required to make something quite as bright. Instead I used what I have in the cupboard to make a “Neapolitan” marble cake.

Method

I used the standard sponge recipe (with real butter). I then added cocoa powder to one third of the batter, red food colouring to another and left the last third plain. This was then dolloped into the tin in a random fashion, evened out and a skewer run through to mix it up. Then baked in the oven as normal. After it had cooled I dusted the top of the cake with icing sugar.

Results

I finally got my oven thermometer sorted so I could actually regulate the temperature of my baking. It worked too and the cake baked and rose well. I was pretty pleased with the texture of the cake, it was a bit denser than usual but I think this is due to using real butter. The pink colouring went a little grey with the baking but I didn’t want to add any more colouring in case it altered the flavour.

I did grease the tin but the cake stuck to the bottom of the pan. This was ok because it was a spring form tin and so I just took the cake with bottom into work! Next time I will remember to add some grease proof paper at the bottom.

The cake tasted good too and went down well with my work colleges. I think it would have been even better with some chocolate on top and maybe in the middle too.

Score: 8/10

Soundtrack: Delhi 2 Dublin (A band I discovered at Solfest, a fusion of Bhangra and Celtic music, they’re great!)