Chocolate and coffee marble cake with cream topping

God, just looking at that cake gives me a sugar caffeine rush. Lordy. It's fairly dense and can be dry... so don't overdo it. Made this for a casual afternoon tea last weekend, and it went down quite well. It's not dressy or special enough for a night-time dessert, but does very well for morning or afternoon tea.



Chocolate and coffee marble cake with cream topping (serves 10-12)
250g unsalted butter
1 big block of Old Gold or other dark eating chocolate, crumbled
1 cup caster sugar
Vanilla extract
4 eggs
4 cups plain flour
1 and a half tablespoons baking powder
1oo ml milk
50ml very strong cold coffee
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 small tub of thickened whipping cream
Couple of tablespoons icing sugar
Vanilla extract again
Instant coffee dissolved in 2 teaspoons lukewarm water

Grease and flour a large loaf tin. Cream butter and sugar together (reserving 1 tbsp of sugar); add vanilla and beat well. Eggs in, one at a time. Sift flour and baking powder. Reserve 2 tbsp milk and stir the rest into the batter with the coffee, alternating with the flour. Spoon two-thirds of the mix into the tin (don't worry if the floured tin-sides get cakey.) Stir the cocoa powder, the leftover sugar and the leftover milk into the remaining batter with the chocolate. Spread this into the tin. Swirl a fork through the tin to marble up the layers. Smooth the top and bake in a preheated oven for a hour or more, till a skewer comes out clean. Turn it onto a rack to cool.

For the topping, I just put the cream, sugar and vanilla into the mixer until it was thick and fluffy, then stirred through the coffee. In the future I probably wouldn't sit the cream on top, as it tended to slide off the cake. I might be more inclined to serve the cream in a bowl alongside.