My dear friend and local author, Dorie Greenspan, has just published her fifteenth cookbook, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes! If you’ve ever baked (or cooked) anything from her award-winning books, you know her witty writing, engaging style, and fool-proof recipes. Dorie shared a preview with E List readers, and I chose this marble cake. A hesitant baker, “simplest” in the title got me! Not only is marble one of my favorites, if any cake qualifies as “anytime” it’s marble, right? Perfect for dessert, a snack or breakfast.

Buy the book: rjjulia.com/book/9780063346963

Illustration Above By: Nancy Pappas

Simplest, Plainest, Most Old-Fashioned—and Best-Tasting—Marble Cake
Makes about 14 servings

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup (60 ml) water
1/3 cup (28 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-processed
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) sugar
2 ounces (28 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 cups (278 grams) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
16 tablespoons (8 ounces; 226 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup (120 grams) full- fat sour cream, at room temperature

• A word on marbling: Have fun! I like to use a cookie scoop to alternate and layer mounds of chocolateand vanilla batter. But you can be more random or more precise. The only caveat is that when you dip your knife into the batter to swirl it, don’t multi-swirl— one or two passes will do the trick. Too much swirling, and the flavors and colors will be over blended and you’ll have defeated the work you did to make a cake with two distinctive flavors and an equally distinctive look.
  

DIRECTIONS

Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 325 degrees F. Coat the inside of a 10-cup Bundt pan with baker’s spray or butter it, dust it with flour and tap out the excess. 

Bring the water to a boil in a small saucepan. Turn off the heat but keep the pan on the hot burner. Whisk the cocoa powder into the water, followed by 1/4 cup of the sugar. When the mixture is smooth, drop in the chocolate and stir until it melts. You can either move the pan to a trivet or a cool burner or scrape the mixture into a medium bowl and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Working in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter and the remaining 1 1/4 cups sugar together on medium speed for about 3 minutes, scraping the bowl and beater(s) often. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one goes in and scraping regularly. The mixture may seem on the verge of curdling—don’t be discouraged. Beat in the vanilla and then the sour cream. By now the mixture might be in full curdle, which is ugly but not fatal. Working on low speed, add half the dry ingredients, and when they’re almost incorporated, add the rest, mixing to blend and scraping as needed. The batter will have regained its smoothness.

Scrape about one-third of the batter into the pan or bowl of chocolate and use a spatula to thoroughly blend the two mixtures together.

It’s marbling moment! And the moment to decide if you’d like to simply make a layer of white batter topped by a layer of chocolate batter or use a cookie scoop or a soupspoon to transfer the batters to the pan before you marble them. If you’re going to scoop—it’s what I do—I think it’s nice if you alternate mounds of chocolate and white batters. Depending on the shape and depth of your pan, you’ll have enough batter for two or three layers of scoops. However you got the two batters into the pan, grab a table knife or a skewer, dip it almost to the bottom of the pan and draw it through the batter, making a full circle. You can swirl the batters again, if you’d like, but two times around is really the max—the sparer the swirling, the more striking the marble pattern will be.

Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until the cake has risen, is golden and pulls away from the sides of the pan when gently tugged; a tester inserted into the center of the cake will come out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes, then unmold it onto the rack and allow the cake to cool to room temperature.

Storing: Wrapped well, the cake will keep for about 4 days at room temperature. It will get a little dry, but it will still be delightful. You can freeze the cake for a month; thaw in the wrapper.

Recipe from DORIE’S ANYTIME CAKES by Dorie Greenspan. Copyright © 2025 by Dorie Greenspan.
Used with permission by Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins. All rights reserved.