Marble Pound Cake
Marble Pound Cake with striking swirls of vanilla and chocolate. This is classic cake done right. An even crumb, melt-in-your-mouth texture, and rich buttery flavor.
Table of contents
From Classic Pound Cake to Marble
Pound cake has been one of my most-tested recipes over the years. It became the foundation for my Classic Pound Cake and for the cake lessons in my Baking School.
If you like understanding why recipes work—not just following steps—you’ll find more background in my Cake Baking Guide. Everything you learn there applies to many styles of baking, not just pound cake.
But turning a great pound cake into a great marble pound cake isn’t as simple as adding chocolate. To create this Marble Pound Cake, I started with my vanilla pound cake recipe—and quickly ran into a very specific problem.
What Sets This Recipe Apart
If you’ve ever made marble cake, you probably already know the problem.
Most marble cake recipes start with a vanilla batter, then instruct you to flavor part of that batter with cocoa, melted chocolate, or cocoa and butter to make a chocolate batter.
But once a batter is fully mixed, adding cocoa or chocolate changes its structure and thickness. The chocolate portion becomes denser than the vanilla portion, which means the two batters bake differently in the same pan.
So how do we get cocoa into part of the batter without making the chocolate cake heavier than the vanilla cake?
I had to figure out how to replace some of the flour in one-third of the batter with cocoa—while still mixing just one batch of batter.
Ingredients
Ingredient Notes
- Cake Flour – Low protein cake flour makes the most tender cake. I prefer bleached cake flour for the softest crumb, but unbleached cake flour is fine to use. Learn more about flour in cake batter in this guide.
- Cocoa Powder – I use Dutched cocoa powder for the deepest color and flavor. Natural cocoa powder can be used instead. Learn more about cocoa powder in this guide.
- Yolks – Adding extra yolks to the batter makes for a fine and rich crumb. Learn more about eggs in cake batter in this guide.
Process Photos
Here’s what the recipe process looks like at each stage. Refer to the recipe card below for measurements and exact instructions.
- Add room temperature butter to the dry ingredients and mix until most of the flour is absorbed.
- Add the milk and mix for 2-3 minutes to aerate the batter.
- Add the eggs in 3 increments, scraping after each addition.
- Mix until the eggs are combined.
- Remove 1/3 of the batter and put it in a separate bowl.
- Whisk the reserved flour into the two-thirds portion of vanilla batter.
- Whisk the cocoa into the 1/3 batch of batter.
- Layer the two batters into the prepared pan starting with 2/3 of the vanilla batter, then the chocolate batter and finally the rest of the vanilla batter. Don’t mix or swirl them together. They will swirl together as they bake.
- Use the spatula to make a crease down the center of the cake. This prevents the peak from rising too much.
Baking Sense Tip: Loaf Pan vs. Bundt Pan
This pound cake can be baked in either a loaf pan or a Bundt pan.
A loaf pan will give you taller slices with a tighter crumb and usually takes longer to bake. A Bundt pan creates more surface area, so the cake bakes a little faster and develops more crust.
Always rely on doneness cues—not just time. The cake is ready when it springs back lightly in the center and a toothpick comes out clean.
- Bake until done, using doneness cues rather than time alone.
- Cool at least 10 minutes in the pan then turn out onto a cooling rack. Cool to room temperature before slicing.
Storage
Keep the cake covered at room temperature for 3–4 days. Cakes are best kept at room temperature unless they have a perishable filling. Refrigeration makes plain cakes go stale faster.
For longer storage, the cake freezes beautifully. Wrap the whole cake, or individual slices, in a double layer of plastic wrap. Allow the cake to defrost at room temperature in the plastic.
If you want to make a marbled layer cake with frosting, try my lighter Marble Cake recipe.
If you love this recipe as much as I do, I’d really appreciate a star rating and a quick comment. Ratings and comments help my recipes show in search results. Thanks!
Marble Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 3 large eggs (room temp)
- 4 egg yolks (room temp)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 oz whole milk (¼ cup, divided)
- 8 oz cake flour (1 ¾ cups, see note)
- ¼ teaspoon table salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 10 oz granulated sugar (1 ¼ cups)
- 9 oz unsalted butter (room temp)
- ¾ oz Dutch process cocoa powder (3 tablespoons)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to at 350 °F. Generously butter and flour a 9"x5" loaf pan or Bundt pan.
- Combine 3 large eggs, 4 egg yolks, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 oz whole milk in a small bowl, whisk to combine and set aside. Set aside 1 oz cake flour (1/4 cup).
- In a mixing bowl, sift together the remaining 7 oz cake flour with ¼ teaspoon table salt and 1 teaspoon baking powder. Add 10 oz granulated sugar to the flour and mix at low speed for 30 seconds. With the mixer still on low speed, add 9 oz unsalted butter, a tablespoon at a time, to the flour and mix until combined. Add 1 oz whole milk and increase the speed to medium high. Mix for a full 2-3 minutes. The batter will lighten in color and texture. If you're using a hand mixer add another minute or two to the mixing time.
- Scrape the bowl and paddle thoroughly. On low speed, add the egg mixture in 3 increments, scraping the bowl after each addition. Mix just until the eggs are incorporated. Remove ⅓ of the batter to another bowl.
- Sift the reserved ¼ cup of flour over the ⅔ portion of batter and use a hand whisk to stir until the flour is incorporated into the batter. Sift and stir the cocoa powder into the ⅓ bowl of batter.
- Spread ⅔ of the vanilla batter into the pan. Drop the chocolate batter over the vanilla batter and gently spread to even it out. Try not to mix the two batters as you spread. Drop the remaining vanilla batter over the chocolate batter. Use the tip of a small spatula to form a crease down the center of the cake.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 60 minutes for a loaf cake and 45 minutes for a Bundt cake.
Would you like to save this recipe?
We’ll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Simple and yummy!
The best pound cake. The technique made all the difference. All my family love it and they make requests ahead for it. Thank you
How much flour?
1 3/4 cup cake flour weighs 200 grams, not 224.
The weight of a cup of flour is not an absolute. How you fill the cup can make a big difference in the weight of the flour in the cup. I use the “dip and sweep” method to fill the cup. That is, I dip the cup into the flour bin, overfill the cup then sweep away the excess. If you spoon the flour into the cup you’ll introduce air into the flour and it will weigh less. I always use the conversion of 4.5 oz of cake flour per cup. The works out to 7.87 oz, which I rounded up to 8 oz for this recipe. I use the conversion of 28g per ounce which is how it comes to 224g. If you want to be very, very exact and use the 7.87 weight then the total grams would be 220.36.
This cake contains salt but your chocolate pound cake do not contain salt. What is the reason for this. Which cake recipe needs salt?
Both cakes have 1/4 teaspoon of salt in the batter. Perhaps you just misread the chocolate pound cake recipe.