Recipe: chocolate, orange & cardamom marble cake

With a dark chocolate ganache

Marble cake is very nostalgic for me. I can still remember the taste of the one we used to get when I was a child, sitting very contented, eating a small slice from an equally small plate, picking up crumbs with the tips of my tiny fingers. It is not like a vanilla cake or a chocolate cake, despite being comprised of both, but has a taste completely unique to itself, and each bite different. A beauty and marvel to look at as well as eat.

This one incorporates the flavours of cardamom and orange, and is finished with a thick, luxurious of dark chocolate ganache.

There are many ways to produce the swirls and patterns that make a marble cake what it is, but I find the method of alternate pouring of the vanilla and cocoa mixtures into the centre of the tin, then using a skewer or chopstick to swirl the mixture a few times to be the most effective at producing clean and beautiful shapes in the finished cake.