Mary Berry Chocolate Chip and Vanilla Marble Cake

Mary Berry’s chocolate chip and vanilla marble cake is a soft traybake made of vanilla and cocoa sponge, studded with plain chocolate chips. It’s drizzled with melted plain and white chocolate and cuts into 21 squares. Allow about an hour, plus cooling.

The recipe comes from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible (2010), where she calls it “a popular traybake for parties.” She adds that “children particularly enjoy the fun of making marble cakes.” It first appeared in her Ultimate Cake Book (2003), and she has changed the fat in every edition since.

The marbling comes from how you spoon it in, not from swirling. Berry dots spoonfuls of vanilla mixture apart in the tin, then fills the gaps with the chocolate mixture. That gives clear patches of each colour once the cake is cut, rather than one muddy brown.

Mary Berry Chocolate Orange Marble Cake Recipe

Recipe by Pinch Perfect

5.0 from 1 vote

Course: DessertCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy

Servings

21

servings

Prep time

20

minutes

Cooking time

35

minutes

Calories

220

kcal

Total time

1

hour 

30

minutes

An all-in-one party traybake from the Baking Bible (2010). One batch of batter is split in two, and half is flavoured with a cocoa paste. The two-chocolate drizzle is piped from snipped plastic bags, so you don’t need a piping bag.

Ingredients

• 225g (8oz) softened butter

• 225g (8oz) caster sugar

• 275g (10oz) self-raising flour

• 2 level teaspoons baking powder

• 4 large eggs

• 2 tablespoons milk

• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1½ level tablespoons cocoa powder

• 2 tablespoons hot water

• 50g (2oz) plain chocolate chips

• For the icing:

• 50g (2oz) plain chocolate (39 per cent cocoa solids)

• 50g (2oz) Belgian white chocolate

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Directions

• Preheat: Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/Gas 4 (350°F). Grease a 30 x 23cm (12 x 9in) traybake or roasting tin and line the base with baking parchment.
• Mix: Measure the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, eggs, milk and vanilla extract into a large bowl and beat well for about 2 minutes, until well blended. Spoon half the mixture into the tin, dotting the spoonfuls apart.
• Chocolate half: In a small bowl, blend the cocoa and hot water. Cool slightly, then add it to the remaining cake mixture along with the chocolate chips. Spoon this chocolate mixture in between the plain mixture to fill the gaps.
• Bake: Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the cake has shrunk from the sides of the tin and springs back when pressed in the centre with your fingertips. Leave to cool in the tin.
• Ice: Break the plain and white chocolate into pieces and melt them separately. Spoon into two small plastic bags, snip off a corner of each and drizzle the chocolates all over the top of the cake. Leave to set for about 30 minutes before cutting into squares.

FAQs

Should I swirl the two mixtures with a skewer?

Berry doesn’t, and I’d leave the skewer in the drawer. Her method gets the pattern from the dotted spoonfuls alone, and the batters spread into each other just enough as they bake. Swirling on top of that blurs the patches together, and you lose the contrast that makes a marble cake look like one.

Butter, margarine or baking spread?

All three are Berry’s own choices, depending on the edition. The Ultimate Cake Book (2003) uses soft margarine, the Baking Bible (2010) switches to softened butter, and the 2023 revised edition uses buttery spread straight from the fridge. Butter gives the richest flavour, the same reason her vanilla traybake is worth making with it too.

Why mix the cocoa with hot water first?

Cocoa is lumpy when dry, and stirring it straight into a thick batter leaves pale streaks and bitter pockets. In Mary Berry Cooks the Perfect (2014), she makes the same point for another cake: mix cocoa “to a smooth paste” with boiling water. Let the paste cool slightly, as step 3 says, so it doesn’t melt the chocolate chips as you stir them in.

How do I get a neat chocolate drizzle?

Melt each chocolate separately, because white chocolate melts faster and burns more easily than plain. Snip only a tiny corner from each bag, then move quickly back and forth across the cake from a little height for thin lines. For a more formal finish, her rich chocolate tray bake feathers white chocolate through a ganache topping instead.

Is this a good cake to bake with children?

Berry thinks so, and the spooning step is the part they’ll enjoy most, because there’s no wrong way to dot the mixture. Let them drizzle the icing too, since a messy drizzle still looks good on a marble cake. If they’re keen for more, her chocolate fairy cakes are the next easy bake to try together.