Grandma’s Marble Pound Cake

Grandma’s Marble Pound Cake – my family recipe; dense and rich; with wonderful flavor coming from lemon zest, rum and chocolate!

My old fashioned Grandma’s Marble Pound Cake from scratch recipe has been in my family for generations. The cake is dense and rich with wonderful flavor coming from lemon zest, rum and chocolate.

My mom would sometimes bake it in a bundt cake tin so she would get Marble Bundt Cake. It is suitable for holidays like Christmas and Easter, but she often made it on Sundays or even on weekdays when she was craving something sweet.

Don’t you love those old recipes with phrases like: take 2 “ribs” of chocolate, or “use as much baking soda as you can fit onto a tip of the knife”? Luckily, I saw my mother using “tip of the knife” quantity of baking soda, so I know approximately the amount necessary. I decided for 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder instead, as I didn’t want my pound cake to be too “spongy”.

Pound cakes generally don’t contain leavener, like baking soda or baking powder because the lift is achieved by creaming butter and sugar together. In the end you fold beaten egg whites into the mixture. Even though I creamed butter and sugar together with egg yolks, I still used 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder and got quite dense loaf, just as I wanted.

I need to warn you that this cake is not very sweet. It was usually served sprinkled with liberal amount of powdered sugar. If you like sweeter desserts, you may want to add more sugar to the batter.

5 from 1 vote

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Grandma's Marble Pound Cake

Grandma's Marble Pound Cake - my family recipe; dense and rich; with wonderful flavor coming from lemon zest, rum and chocolate; can be baked in bundt cake tin too!

Course: Dessert

Servings: 1 loaf

Author: Kitchen Nostalgia

Ingredients

• 130 g (1/2 cup or 1 stick + 2 tsp) butter, room temperature
• 3 eggs, separated, room temperature
• 200 g (1 cup + 1 Tbsp) sugar
• 250 g (2 1/4 cups) cake flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 6 Tbsp milk
• grated lemon zest
• 1 Tbsp dark rum or rum flavoring
• 90 g (3 oz) bittersweet chocolate, melted

Instructions

1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.
2. Mix butter, egg yolks and sugar together until fluffy.

3. Add flour, baking powder, milk, lemon zest and rum and mix until incorporated.

4. Gently fold in beaten egg whites using spatula or a spoon (do not use mixer for this step).
5. Divide the batter in two equal parts. Mix melted chocolate into one half of the batter.

6. In a buttered and floured loaf pan, place one by one tablespoon of yellow and brown batter intermittently. Drag a fork through the dough to get marble pattern.

7. Bake at 165 C (330 F) for 50-60 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness.

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