Marble Cake Recipe

Last Saturday I talked about the importance of having cake to serve to friends and family on the Sabbath.

Friday, the day of preparation for the Sabbath, is when all the food for the Sabbath is prepared in Jewish homes in Israel (and around the world.) So here, on the eve of the Sabbath, is a recipe for my favorite cake, a marble cake. The recipe was given to me by my friend Pearl from Kibbutz Hazorea. I often make it on on the weekend as my Ugat Shabbat [u-GAT sha-BAT] or Sabbath Cake. Even though I'm not Jewish, I still celebrate the weekend with cake!

By the way, this coming weekend is a long weekend in Ontario for the first time. The government has given us a new holiday: Family Day. Another great reason to have cake!


This is my family's absolutely favorite cake! We don't put icing on it - but sometimes serve it with a scoop of ice cream.

Pearl's Marble Cake:
(This is Pearl's original cake recipe. I have added my personal adaptations for making it vegan and "healthier"at the end.)

1. Cream together: 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1 1/2 cups sugar - then add 2 eggs.
2. Prepare 1 cup of sour milk or yogurt (To make milk sour, add a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to every cup of milk.)
3. Prepare the dry ingredients: 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 1/4 cups of flour. (I never add salt or vanilla to cakes - if you want to, add 1/4 teaspoon of each)
4. To the creamed together mixture, add a third of the dry ingredients. Mix. Then add half of the milk. Mix. Add another third of the dry ingredients. Mix. Add the rest of the milk. Mix. Finally add the last of the dry ingredients. This is your cake batter. Some people believe that the more you mix a cake, the better it tastes.
5. Pour the batter into a well-oiled bundt pan. Then prepare the chocolate sauce used to marble the cake
6. Chocolate sauce for marble effect: Mix 1/2 cup of Nestles Quick or any other sweetened chocolate drink powder with just enough milk to make it as thick as thick cream. Pour this onto the cake, swirling it into the batter to make a design.
7. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit ( 175 degrees Celsius) for about 50 minutes. It really depends on the oven and the kind of pan used. Check the cake by sticking a toothpick into the middle. If no batter sticks to the toothpick, it is ready to come out of the oven.
8. Let the cake cool completely before removing it from the pan.
9. Enjoy!

Here's how the cake batter looks before it is marbled.















Here's how the batter looks like after the chocolate marbling .

Vegan Version of this Cake:

• Replace each egg with 1 tablespoon soy flour mixed with 1 tablespoon of water. Use vegan margarine in place of butter, and soy beverage or other milk substitute in place of milk.

"Healthy" Versions - I am constantly trying to make cakes "healthier." (To justify eating more, of course!)

• In the last cake I made (pictured here), I replaced 4 tablespoons of the flour with 2 tablespoons of wheat germ and 2 tablespoons of psyllium.

When I took a workshop on preparing food for Type 2 diabetics, the dietitian said that whenever she baked anything, she always replaced 4 tablespoons of flour with 2 tablespoons of wheat germ and 2 tablespoons of psyllium. The texture of the cake was unaffected and it came out of the bundt pan easily.

• Sometimes I use one third white flour, one third whole wheat flour, one third spelt flour (which has more protein and is supposed to be good for Type 2 diabetics.) The cake still tastes good, but does not come out of a bundt pan well, in my experience. It tends to crumble. So if you use other than white flour, perhaps put it in a rectangular pan and serve it out of the pan. It still tastes great!