Marble Cake with Cinnamon and Cardamom

Marble cake is a good old classic. To me, it always brings back childhood memories. It was my favorite cake when I was a little girl. Myriam Zumbühl (remember her from her lovely series Myriam und die Meisterbäcker?) spiced this simple recipe up by adding roasted and ground cardamom seeds and cinnamon buds ("Zimtblüte") to the cake batter. Cinnamon buds have a much more intense aroma than ground cinnamon, it's more diverse, fuller and almost flowery. Just heart-warming. And I swear, this cake and me… love at first bite. Pure comfort on a day you thought the sun was going to be shining and then the sky is all grey instead.

Recipe

(from the wonderful Myriams Kuchen Tartes & Co. by Myriam Zumbühl)

200g soft butter

200g sugar

1 vanilla pod, scraped out seeds

3 large eggs

250g flour

3 tablespoons baking powder

5 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

4 cardamom pods, roasted, seeds crushed

1 tablespoons ground cinnamon buds or simply ground cinnamon, works just as well

icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a 25-30cm cake tin with parchment paper and grease with butter.

In a large bowl, beat butter with an electric hand mixer until soft. Add 180g of the sugar and the seeds of the vanilla pod. Beat until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one by one. Then, sift in the flour together with the baking powder. Add two tablespoons of milk and beat until all is well combined.

Fill 2/3 of your batter into the prepared cake tin. Add cocoa powder and spices to the rest of the batter together with the rest of the sugar (20g) and 3 tablespoons of milk. Beat until well combined. Then, fill the chocolate batter into your cake tin, too and run a fork through the dough so that you get a marble effect.

Bake the cake in the middle of the oven for about 50-60 minutes (mine took about 45 minutes only). Test with a wooden skewer, whether your cake is done. There should be no more batter sticking to your skewer. 

Let the cake cool. Dust with icing sugar before serving. If you bake the cake one day ahead, the aroma of the spices can develop and the cake smells even better!