Strawberry Marble Cake
Pink strawberry batter dragged once through vanilla, so every slice comes out with a different swirl, under a spoonful of warm strawberry sauce.
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Prep
- 30 min
- Bake
- 45 min
- Serves
- 10
- Level
- Medium
- Tin
- 20 cm springform
Marble cake fails in two directions: the swirl disappears, or the pink is so aggressive it tastes of sweet shop. Both come from the same place: colouring instead of fruit.
Reducing 300 g of strawberries down to about 120 ml of thick purée takes fifteen minutes and gives you a batter that is genuinely strawberry, with a swirl that survives baking. The colour is dusty rose rather than neon, and that is the point.
Drag the skewer through once. Just once.
Ingredients
For the strawberry purée
For the cake
For the strawberry sauce
To finish
You will need
- 20 cm springform tin
- Small saucepan
- Skewer or chopstick
- Wire rack
Method
Oven 175°C · fan 155°C · 345°F
Reduce the strawberries first
Simmer the 300 g strawberries with the lemon juice in a small pan for 12–15 minutes, crushing them, until you have about 120 ml of thick purée. Cool it completely. Watery purée makes a streaky, soggy swirl.
Tip Reduce it further than feels necessary. It should mound on the spoon, not run off it.
Heat the oven and line the tin
Heat the oven to 175°C / 155°C fan. Butter a 20 cm springform tin and line the base.
Cream the butter and sugar
Beat the butter and sugar for 4–5 minutes until pale and noticeably lighter in volume. This is the only lift the cake gets, so give it the full time.
Add the eggs, then the dry ingredients
Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of the flour with each to stop it splitting. Fold in the remaining flour, baking powder and salt, then the milk and vanilla, until just combined.
Split and colour the batter
Move a third of the batter to a second bowl and fold in the cooled strawberry purée. Do not add colouring: the pink is soft and slightly greyish, which is what real fruit looks like.
Layer and drag once
Spoon the two batters into the tin in alternating blobs. Push a skewer down to the base and drag it through in one slow figure-of-eight, then stop. Two passes turn marble into mud.
Bake for 45 minutes
Bake for 43–48 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the top is golden with a pale crack down the middle.
Make the sauce while it cools
Simmer the remaining strawberries with the sugar and lemon juice for 8 minutes until glossy and syrupy. Leave the halves whole, they are the good bit.
Release and slice
Cool 20 minutes in the tin, unclip the ring, then cool completely on the base before slicing. Scatter fresh strawberry halves over the top and pour the warm sauce over each slice.
Baker's notes
- Frozen strawberries work perfectly for both the purée and the sauce, and are often better than out-of-season fresh ones.
- If your butter is too cold to cream, grate it. It softens in minutes.
Keeping it Keeps 3 days in a tin at room temperature. The sauce keeps 5 days in the fridge and freezes well.
Questions, answered
Why did my marble turn into one pink cake?
Too much dragging. One slow pass through the batter is all it takes; the blobs do most of the work themselves as they rise.
Can I use jam instead of making purée?
You can, but use a thick, low-sugar jam and only 3 tablespoons. Standard jam is too sweet and too loose, and it sinks.
If it goes wrong
Three things account for most of what happens to a cake in a domestic oven. Each has its own guide.
- It sank in the middleSeven causes, told apart by the shape of the crater.
- It came out raw in the centreBrown outside, wet inside, and how to rescue the one you are holding.
- The caramel seizedIt is almost always fixable. The lump re-melts.
