The Sugar Bar

Marmorkuchen (a traditional Austrian cake) has various names and is conventionally known in different parts of the world as Marble Cake or Tiger Cake (also Tiikerikakku in Finland) for reasons quite obvious to the eye. To me, marmorkuchen is my dream tiger cake. One, I was dreaming about it last night strange to say and woke up to find a Tiger Cake post on Tastespotting. I instantly knew it was fate and some foodie bone in me was giving me a heads up on the need to make it. Secondly, I love tigers. Big cats are my favourite animal and although the cheetah comes top for me, I was always jealous of Jasmine from Aladdin who was allowed to keep a tiger as a pet. Of course I know that’s impossible and bordering on immorality considering tigers are wild cats that should be living and breeding as they wish on lands they can call home, free from those bloody poachers. Never did stop me from having a thing for cats though or creating an imaginary tiger friend. Cats are just so beautiful, elegant, sleek and sexy. Too bad my whole family is big on dogs, so majority wins – I have 4 dogs. And my Dad’s pretty obsessed with animals too so he’s got a bird aviary filled with a collection of his favourite beloved birds which, wait for this, don’t fly away if you leave the cage open and if they do fly away, they come back in the evenings back to my Dad. So even if Mum & I are slightly against caged animals, it can’t be helped that these birds adore my Dad as much as he does them. He’s built a koi pond on the patio as well and goes out to feed his fish day and evening religiously. What a cute sucker my Dad is.

Anyway, my third reason for calling it my dream tiger cake is also the fact that it goes way back in my childhood when these little cakes, marbled with psychedelic colours like bright blue or green with pink, purple and orange, etc. were easily found in shops near my home. They were sold in simple folded paper liners and smelt so good and sweet. Only thing was I was a fat kid and Mum didn’t like us stuffing our faces with sweets or for that matter, fake food colouring. Damn! That dream was totally blasted away. Managed to sooth that trauma with coloured sweet rice wafers though that came in a pack of 4 different pastel colours. It was the life.

The present me, mature and oh so cool, will one day like to make a marmorkuchen with the best natural food colouring I can find. I think holland&basset (is that the company?) does some amazing organic food colouring. I’ll have to check that out for this future project of mine. Colourful food is cool! But for now, let’s stick to this childhood classic – a white and brown cake using chocolate as its coloured base. What could be more heart-thumping than seeing all that chocolate mixing about in the batter, looking almost like chocolate smoke solidified and captured in a vanilla capsule – immortalised like that mosquito in amber? Awesome, I say.

From the hands of Oscar Wilde it has been written that suffering is the means by which we, as human beings, realise we exist. It is because of suffering that we are conscious of ourselves living and hence, why we can remember our past: “it is because it was full of moments and days tragic, bitter, sinister in their warnings, dull or dreadful in their monotonous scenes and unseemly violences, that I can see or hear each separate incident in its detail” – Letters. Although I agree with such an opinion, I cannot presume to say that my life has been full of much melodramatic instances of pain and great loss to render myself a more than sublunary being of immense heightened consciousness. Everyone has their fair share of ups and downs and I am thankful for the parts of my life that took a big fat dive because indeed, it is only then that I cherish the best parts – the ups. And then, it’s even better that I remember the good bits of the past and if remembering the yummy things of my childhood is thanks to loss, tears, heartbreak, pain – then naturally, I am glad for suffering. Remember Scrooge who transforms into a happier person after rediscovering all the joy and pleasure of his childhood in A Christmas Carol? Indeed, our past, our experience and our childhood is a wealth of new life, knowledge and understanding albeit at the cost of pain. Without a cost, nothing would have value. So I like to start by tapping into that wealth through the medium of food. Following that, today, I am so pleased with this marmorkuchen. What will we ever do without the foods of our childhood?

This recipe has been taken off Pittsburgh Needs Eated and a big thanks to her because this recipe is great! Alice Medrich scores again! Marmorkuchen is usually made almond flavoured, laced with a bit of rum and calls for really good quality butter to get that absolutely stunning perfume of butter and wicked buttery texture. However, I thought to use Lisa from Pittsburgh’s recipe because I thought the use of white pepper and extra virgin olive oil was novel. I’ve never made anything sweet with extra virgin olive oil before because I think extra virgin is too flavourful on its own and might overpower the other ingredients. White pepper in something sweet confused me a little too. I thought I’d read the recipe wrong and was like ‘What?’. On the contrary, the olive oil made this cake smell so sexy. It enhanced the taste of the chocolate, gave it this great perfume and the batter a great colour. The pepper worked oddly well too although I think I’ll still substitute that for rum. Chilli and chocolate is alright for me, but white pepper seems a little off still.

This yields about 2 loaf tins worth of batter so if needed, you can halve the recipe. I got all shakey-handed because my mixing bowl was too little and I ended up having to be extremely careful beating and folding the ingredients by hand because I was worried about splashing olive oil batter all about the kitchen. I wouldn’t have been impressed with myself if it resulted in that – thankfully it didn’t. Quite a spray of chocolate batter all over the kitchen tabletops but I’m cool with that. For convenience sake, I’m reposting Lisa’s recipe here. Cheers again to her. Without her, I wouldn’t have fulfilled that tiny little dream of mine. When big dreams come true, we’re euphoric. But it’s alright to start with the little ‘literal’ dreams we have whilst cuddled up warm under the covers at night, isn’t it?

Marmorkuchen
Ingredients

1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup caster sugar
3 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup good quality extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp finely ground white pepper
5 cold large eggs
1 cup cold milk

Grease 2 loaf tins. Preheat oven to 175d Celsius.

Whisk together water, cocoa and 1/2 cup caster sugar until well blended.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
In a large bowl, beat together sugar, oil, vanilla and pepper. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. When all the eggs are in the bowl, beat till pale for 3-5min. (I did this completely by hand. If your choice of weapon, like mine, is a wooden spoon, get your groove on.)
Add a third of flour mixture. Beat. Add half of milk, beat. Add next third of flour, beat then milk. Finally, ending with the last third of flour mixture.
Take about 3 cups of this batter and add to cocoa mixture, stirring carefully with whisk or spoon till combined.
Pour white batter as a base into tins, then a third of cocoa mixture, then white then black. You get the idea. There is no need to fiddle much with this process as the colours will marble itself as it cooks.

Bake for 1hr 10min or till cake tester inserted comes out clean. Let cool in tin for 15min after removing from oven. Remove, let cool completely. Slice up and polish it all off, either by yourself or with friends. Preferable the latter because this recipe will yield more than you can handle.

Because chocolate cakes always taste better a day old, try keeping these slices in an airtight container or sealed food bags overnight. Eating them the next day is quite a different experience as the marmorkuchen becomes more fragrant and tasty. The extra virgin olive oil helps preserve its taste a lot better too.