#January Joy:Try a new recipe / Marble cake

I don't know why, but never in my life had I made a chocolate-vanilla marble cake. So last Monday I decided to give it a try. I looked for different recipes, I normally trust  BBC Good Food or Martha Stewart but both of those asked for Dutch-process cocoa instead of real chocolate, so I was not sure if the result would be chocolatey enough.

In the end I went with this recipe from Joy of Baking, because it included yoghurt (or sour cream), brewed coffee, baking soda and dark chocolate. I have found that recipes that include buttermilk / sour cream / yoghurt + baking soda make for very moist, fluffy cakes so as soon as I found the recipe I decided this was the one.

And it didn't disappoint! The cake was really good, simple, perfect. To decorate it I just poured some melted chocolate over the top (I did not have cream to make a proper ganache) and some sugar figures that I had laying around. I do have to practice my swirling. For some reason I had more chocolate than vanilla in my mix, but more chocolate never hurt anyone.Oh and I used a simple 15 cm. pan instead of a bundt pan, and I don't really think it changed the results.

You will need
140 grams dark chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon brewed coffee 
295 gr. (2 1/4 cup) flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
170 gr. (3/4 cup) butter, room temperature 
250 gr (1 1/4 cup) brown sugar
3 eggs, room temperature    
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
80 ml (1/3 cup) greek yoghurt
120 ml  (1/2 cup) milk, room temperature 

What to do 

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Melt chocolate with the brewed coffee au-bain-marie (over a pan of simmering water) and set aside so it reaches room temperature. Sift the flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt. Beat the butter together with the sugar until soft and fluffy. Add the eggs, one by one, followed by the vanilla extract and yoghurt, until the mix is homogenous. Next add the flour and milk, alternating between the two. Divide your batter in two unequal halves (Animal Farm style) and add the melted chocolate to the "smaller" half. Grease and flour an oven pan and scoop the chocolate and vanilla batter, alternating the two. When you are done use a knife or toothpick to create swirls. Bake for 40 min to 1 hour, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Take it out of the oven, let it cool, unmould and enjoy!