Eggless Marble Cake

Pretty swirls, rich flavours and deliciously moist-an all time favourite marble cake. It's like getting best of both the worlds- vanilla & chocolate with a an accent of coffee. Perfect with tea or coffee, this cake is lightly sweet. I, for some reason, had not baked this humble but delicious cake till recently. And then I made couple more as it was a hit at my place and at clients' similarly.
So, get that spatula ready, throw your apron on and get baking this gem!

This recipe is adapted from sailusfood.com

Ingredients:
Maida / All purpose flour- 2 cups
Baking Powder - 1+1/4 tsp
Baking soda - 1/2 tsp
Salt -  1/2 tsp
Oil- 1/2 cup
Caster sugar- 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp
Yogurt -  1/2 cup
Lukewarm milk - 1 cup
Apple cider vinegar / white vinegar / lemon juice - 3/4 tbsp
Vanilla essence - 1 tsp
Cocoa Powder - 1/3 cup
Instant coffee powder - 1 tbsp
Hot water - 1/4 cup

 Method:

1. Sieve maida, baking powder,  baking soda and salt in a bowl. Sieve at least 3 times so everything is uniformly mixed and helps aeration too. Pre heat the oven at 160 C. for 10 minutes. 

2. Add vinegar to lukewarm water and give it a stir. Keep aside. 
This is the buttermilk we will use for baking. 

3. Add cocoa powder, 2 tbsp sugar and instant coffee powder in another bowl. Add hot water to the mix and stir until everything is mixed and no lumps remain.

4. Grease, dust and line your bundt cake tin or rectangular bread tin.You can use regular cake tins too.

5.In a third bowl, add oil and sugar. Mix well with a whisk. Add the prepared buttermilk, yogurt and vanilla essence to this mixture, Mix thoroughly, but gently, till no lumps remain.

6. Now add the maida mixture to the mixture above in 4 parts. The vanilla cake batter is ready.

7. Add a little less than half the batter into the chocolate mixture and stir well.

8. Now spoon the two batters side by side - vanilla-chocolate-vanilla-chocolate, continuing the 
same way as you move to the top. Fill the tin 3/4 th.  Now with a toothpick, make swirls, not touching the sides.  

9. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Check after 40 minutes. Once done, cool on the wire rack. 

10. Slice the cake and eat it with a cup of earl grey or drizzle it with home made chocolate sauce and eat it with vanilla ice cream. This cake is versatile- you can eat it the way you like it!

Home made Chocolate Sauce
Ingrdients:
Dark chocolate, chopped - 1 cup
Fresh cream- 1/4 cup
Full cream milk- 1/4 cup
butter- 1 tbsp

Method:
1. Mix dark chocolate and butter in  a bowl and heat in a microwave till melted and smooth. Do this in the spurts of 30 seconds. Mix in between with the help of a spatula.
2. In the meantime, mix fresh cream and milk and heat over gas, stirring continuously so as not to burn the mixture. Once it  starts boiling, add it to dark chocolate- butter mix. Mix well with spatula to get silky, smooth, delicious chocolate sauce.
3. Pour it over the cake and dig in!

Note:
How to grease your tin-
1. With help pf a pastry brush, grease the tin with oil / butter. Now dust the tin with maida, tapping along all the sides so the flour is evenly coated.
2. Once coated, turn it upside down and tap it to remove any excess flour.
3. If baking in a rectangle or regular tin, line the bottom dusted area with baking paper, cut to size.
4. Your tin is ready to use for baking.