Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting, #TheCakeSliceBakers

NinjaBaker — Thu, 21 May 2015 02:57:01 +0000

The Cake Slice Bakers are a group of bakers from around the world. Every month a new challenge arrives...Currently, we are presented with the opportunity to bake one of four preselected recipes from Southern Living’s The Southern Cake Book. I combined two choices and created one Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting.

Plump, pretty strawberries sway me to their side every time. Japan, my home country, is the world’s biggest consumer of dessert strawberries. This Ninja Baker couldn’t fathom saying no to those gorgeous fruit gems. Childhood influences are indelible, aren’t they?

Sometimes cake with coffee for breakfast is a beautiful thing.
(The frosting contains fresh strawberries so it must be legal, right?)

So, I plucked the Strawberry Mousse Cake option for this month’s Cake Slice Bakers presentation. Time, however, slipped through my hands. Resigned to my fate, I chose the Chocolate Marble Cake recipe. However, I stole the fresh strawberry frosting from the Strawberry Mousse Cake to top off my Pink Chocolate Marble Cake.

Fresh Strawberries 'n Cream in Cake!

Ninja Cake Notes:

Pink Chocolate: White chocolate powder with a dash of rose food coloring (the kind you use for candy) created the pink chocolate. The white chocolate flavor does not translate. Next time, I would melt additional white chocolate to add with the white chocolate powder. (Available at Coffee, Tea & Bean and online.)
Cake Test: The cake, however, does not disappoint. The Southern Cake Book’s marble cake is moist and hums homemade goodness. The kind your grandma, auntie or fill in the blank of your favorite childhood baker made. (I believe the butter may have something to do with this phenomena.)
Marble Magic: Despite the easy recipe, I was still a tad nervous about the marble effect. Would it work? Well, what do you know? Follow instructions and you’ve got a replication of the photo seen in The Southern Cake Book. (Except my marble was in pink instead of dark chocolate.) Perhaps you already know this trick. Basically, you pour vanilla batter into the bottom of the pan followed by the chocolate batter. Gently swirl to produce marble magic!

Pink chocolate marble cake magic!
The strawberry frosting is berry spectacular, too.

Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting

Pink chocolate marbles classic buttery yellow cake. Topped with fresh strawberry frosting, this fluffy, fun cake recipe is ideal for birthdays. Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting is great for other celebrations, too...such as making it through Monday!

Adapted from The Southern Cake Book's recipe for Chocolate Marble Cake.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1 cup butter, at room temperature
1¾ cups sugar
(1½ cups for the vanilla batter, ¼ cup for the pink chocolate batter)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt (skip the fleur de sels, plain table salt works wonders!)
1 cup half-and-half
¼ cup white chocolate powder
3 tablespoons hot water
Rose pink food coloring

For the frosting:

6 tablespoons softened butter
6 tablespoons of finely minced fresh strawberries
2 ½ cups of powdered sugar

Directions:

For the cake:

Line a 13 x 9 pan with aluminum foil. (You probably already know this trick. But it’s worth mentioning and saves sooooo much time and dishpan hands!) Spray the foil with baking spray.

Preheat the oven to 325 (after 15 minutes of baking, you’ll increase the temperature to 350.)

In the bowl of a kitchen stand mixer, whip together the butter and sugar for 5 minutes. One at a time, add the eggs. Stir in the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Divide the mixture into thirds. Pour the first third of flour into the butter bowl. (Begin and end with the flour mixture.) Beat on low speed. Alternate the flour additions with the half-and-half.

Once the batter is well combined, scoop out 1¼ cups into a separate bowl. Stir in ¼ cup white chocolate powder with 3 tablespoons of hot water and ¼ cup of sugar. Squeeze in a few drops of pink food coloring. Combine well. (For a more chocolaty taste, add melted white chocolate.)

Spread the vanilla batter into the prepared pan. Pour the pink batter over the first layer and swirl with a chopstick or knife.

Bake at 325 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn up the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for another 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

For the frosting:

Fluff up the butter with an electric mixer. Add in the strawberries and powdered sugar on low speed (to avoid dry cleaning bills from staining splatters!)

An InLinkz Link-up

Wishing you blessings of berry sweetness.

The Ninja Baker

The Ninja Baker has guest blogged and contributed recipes to numerous food sites. These additional recipes can be found here.

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Tags:

#strawberry #frosting

#marble

The Ninja Baker - #marble

Pink Chocolate Marble Cake with Fresh Strawberry Frosting, #TheCakeSliceBakers