4.85 from 268 votes

Marble Cake

By Sam MerrittPublished Aug 02, 2022

699 Comments

Servings: 12 slices

1 hr

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The ultimate people pleaser, this soft, fluffy, moist Marble Cake is a swirled masterpiece of vanilla and chocolate. This cake is shockingly easy to make and tastes as good as it looks! Recipe includes a how-to video.

Marble cake with bite taken out on white plate

Marble Cake (AKA: The People Pleaser)

Some people like chocolate cake, some people like vanilla cake–but everyone loves this marble cake!

It’s a beautiful, swirled combination that’s perfectly chocolatey with just the right amount of vanilla. If you’ve tried and enjoyed my zebra cake, you’ll love this richer, more elegant take, minus the whipped egg whites and special ingredients. It’s simple, gorgeous, and designed to please!

This recipe is a close cousin to my popular vanilla cake; it’s wonderfully soft, moist, and so flavorful. When developing this recipe, I originally toyed with the idea of making two separate batters, but ultimately decided it was too much of a hassle. That technique produced many more dishes and a much larger mess, and the cakes didn’t bake as evenly together as I would’ve liked. After a dozen more rounds of testing, I finally figured out a way to keep things simple with one batter for both flavors.

You’ll love my recipe because it’s:

Perfect for parties–everyone is happy!
Soft, fluffy, and moist.
Simple to make with just one batter.
Cloaked with a thick and fudgy chocolate frosting (just one of many options–more below!)

What You Need

This marble cake uses basic ingredients you’ll already have on hand. Let’s go over a few of the key players:

Butter and oil. Butter adds flavor that you would miss from using just oil, and oil adds moisture that you would miss if you only used butter.
Flour. I use all-purpose, but cake flour may be substituted; see the notes below the recipe card.
Baking powder. A tablespoon may seem like a lot. It’s not a typo, trust me on this one 😉.
Buttermilk. Yes, even though we aren’t using baking soda (which is often used alongside buttermilk, if you recall my buttermilk substitute post), we are still using buttermilk. It adds flavor and moisture to the marble cake.
Chocolate. Adding cocoa powder didn’t give me the deep, distinct chocolate flavor that I was looking for (largely because we aren’t adding any hot water to bloom it, like in my chocolate cake recipe), but adding melted semisweet chocolate did the trick. You can use semisweet or dark chocolate here depending on your preference.

SAM’S TIP: If you only have salted butter on hand, you can reduce the salt in the recipe to ½ teaspoon.

Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!

How to Make Marble Cake

Heat your chopped chocolate in the microwave until it’s smooth and melted, then set aside.
Cream the butter, oil, and sugar until fluffy, then stir in the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla.
Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then alternate adding this mixture and the buttermilk to the wet ingredients, starting and ending with the dry ingredients.
Portion ⅓-½ of the batter into a separate bowl and add stir in the melted chocolate until uniform.
Alternate adding the vanilla and chocolate batter into your pans, then swirl them with a knife for a marbled appearance.
Bake your cakes for 30 minutes, let them cool in their pans for 15 minutes, then invert them onto a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.

SAM’S TIP: You can also reverse-cream this marble cake (the technique I used in my caramel cake) for a plush, dense crumb. If you often accidentally over-mix your cakes, it’s almost impossible to do so with the reverse-creaming method.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s a good marble cake frosting?

I like using my favorite chocolate frosting (though in the video I used my chocolate buttercream; either will work!). If you’re looking for a vanilla option, my classic buttercream frosting, cream cheese frosting, Swiss meringue buttercream, or German buttercream would work well.

Why isn’t my marble cake moist?

There are a few causes for a dry cake, but the main reasons are over-measuring your flour, overmixing, or overbaking.

I use a kitchen scale to measure my ingredients to avoid over-measuring my flour, as this is a very common mistake. I suggest you do the same! Once you begin combining the dry and wet ingredients, you want to be very careful to mix until just combined–and don’t use a mixer. Finally, you want to bake your marble cake until a toothpick comes out clean, or preferably, with a few moist crumbs; many ovens run hot though, so you’ll want to start checking your cake a few minutes before it should be done.

Follow these tips and your marble cake should turn out perfectly moist every time!

How should marble cake be stored?

Store your marble cake in an airtight container. I recommend keeping it at room temperature, where it will keep for 2-3 days (so long as it isn’t a particularly humid environment). This cake may be refrigerated (again, in an airtight container) and will keep for about 5-7 days in the fridge–BUT, keep in mind that the refrigerator will dry out your cake, even in a container.

Marble cake on cake platter with slice taken out

It’s always exciting to see the beautiful swirls when you cut into a marble cake!

Enjoy!

Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook