chocolate and vanilla bean swirled marble cake

Aaaand I'm back.

Here's a cake I made today. I gave part to my parents and I'm about to bring a piece to the hospital for the nurse that helped my dad a lot these past weeks.

First you get the vanilla batter with a bit of lemon extract and vanilla beans swirled in.

Then you get the chocolate with some scharffen berger bittersweet folded inside

Then you dump em in your pan and cut through it with a knife.

Then you wait for it to bake and take lots of shots of it for no reason. :P

pumps and a bundt

Just the bundt, please.

This is the same cake as in my last post but I made this one in a Nordicware anniversary pan.

let them eat cake!

So this cake was pretty simple ingredients wise, but my measurements for the milk (cream) are not exact, everything else is pretty close
It's sort a hybrid of a pound cake and my mom's recipe with a touch of me added in for ratchetness. =)

This will make a big bundt cake that will initially rise and fill the entire pan but settle to about where you filled it to (3/4ths of the way up):
3c flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 3/4ths c white sugar (i've played around with all different types of sugar ratios/contents/honey/agave nectar, but this is the simplest way to not worry about altering your other ingredients or whether the sugar will cream properly in the case of switching to brown sugar. )
6 eggs, room temp
3 annahalf sticks o butter (yeah, you can lower the fat content by the half stick but, I didn't :P)
ample vanilla extract (I prolly used almost a tablespoon)a dash of lemon extract
2 pods worth of vanilla beans (cut down the center and scraped for the beany goodness then placed in a ziploc with some sugar for later coffee/hot chocolate happy fun time.)
cream/half n half/whole milk (choose your poison :P)

preheat oven to 325, butter & flour your pan
cream butter with sugar for about 5 mins till very light and fluffy, be sure to scrape down the sides so that everything is evenly fluffed
crack eggs into a separate bowl, add extracts and vanilla to them, then pour about a glug or so of cream (room temperature is "best" but I didn't feel like waiting for it so you can do it cold too! )

In another bowl combine the flour, salt and baking powder. sift or mix well. (I seem to have misplaced my sifter so I just mixed it a whole lot with a french whisk) :kanyeshrug:
Now here's where the ratchetness begins. In some recipes they tell you to alternate wet with dry and mix accordingly but me, I hate that shyt soo I'mma tell you what I did.
Like to hea' it? here it go!
I dumped the egg mixture in (lightly beaten to combine a little and scraped down after pouring to ensure maximum vanilla beanage)

I dumped the flour mixture in [ok don't literally "dump" this because you'll end up with perfectly proportioned flour, baking powder and salt all around and not IN your mixing bowl]

I put the beater on low (I used a hand mixer) and added cream till the consistency got to what I wanted it to be (think thick, spreadable cake batter and not loose pourable.)
Fill the pan no more than 3/4ths full or else it'll go over the sides and mess up the bottom when it cools. If you have extra put it in lil mini cupcake pans or a petit fours pan like I did, but don't let the sweet tea vodka roll over and crush it [like I did =(]
Bake for an hour or till a toothpick (or butter knife or handle of a fork) inserted in that little indented ring that forms in the middle comes out clean.

xtreeem vanilla beeeeean closeup:


And I almost forgot, simple ratio for everything except the leavening agents, milk and extracts is as follows

x, flour, x butter +, x sugar -, 2x eggs

So for this I used 3 c flour, 3 sticks butter (and a lil more), 3 cups sugar (minus 1/4th), 6 eggs

I normally do 2|2+|2-|4 for flour|butter|sugar|eggs and a normal springform cake pan. =)

for every 1 1/2 c of flour you will need 1 tsp of baking powder and a 1/4th teaspoon of salt.

fin