Blessings From My Kitchen: Chocolate-vanilla marble cake and a marshmallow fondant revisit

If you were to ask me how many times a year I make cake or have baked desserts. I'd stumble, mmm, how would I give you a definitive answer? More so, what would you think if you really knew ? And I will admit it's more, much more than I've had you believe.

You see, of the 365 days I walk my kitchen, I live to bake, cake, on most- big, small, loaf, cupped, layered, checkered, pop-sticked, soaked- and eat the results. Though, often than not, it's the weeknight one-bowl whipandbake, unadorned, negates any amount of loft which might have them in for a showandtell. Frequents, that make for substantial after-dinner glee, whose stories remain untold, even though many might be possible contenders for the online spotlight.

Way too many to count these standard everyday occurrences, some that do seem worthy, but never see light, due to the lack of hands, words or, in my case, motivation to record all the flour-sugar-egg narratives that make dessert rotations on my daily table.

Marble cake, fits and serves just that "everyday cake" bill. A combination of batters in contrasting colors and flavors swirled to a deliriously pretty effect, it assaults more than a few of your senses. The moist crumb is what hits you the second you take a bite, after you get over the stunning visual effects of yellow and brown psychedelics. This is cocoa- vanilla coupling that's almost too delightful to believe. Because even I question myself on how, really, can something that looks this good, and be ridiculously easy, actually be that good? Oh but it can, and I am honest here, people when I say it does delicious in a so rank a way, that it need no accoutrement whatsoever.

Just have it be, charming enough to accompany sips of afternoon tea. Or even tall iced glasses of milk.

But hey, do we limit something of such impending magnitude and and stop there? For there is much more that transcends and greatly adds to Marbles's values. Thereby, it can and will stretch far beyond the spectrum, to grandiose ventures, where it can duly dazzle in fanciful embellished affairs.

And it did achieve just that, contributing to a broader picture, being the star component in an impressive, at least to a batch of 11 year old boys, birthday cake for my Second Born. Thus, after making his favorite sport edible, almost a month ago today, my oven has welcomed the same marble cake, twice since.

Simple, sweet and sensational. I believe I owe it to you, so that your weeknights and occasions can be graced by just this kind of versatile cake visitation.

So with this discourse as I show off the personalities and possibilities of today's subject, I thought it'd be beneficial to work in a marshmallow fondant review as well. I had given you an ingredient list and accompanying workflow once upon a time, but I believe we can perhaps tweak it just the minutest, so that you may never have to purchase those from store shelves, majority of which my kids won't touch if you payed them (and that's saying a lot).

Further, my thanks to the many YouTube demos on how-to-make-soccerball-cake-a-reality and pinteresty illustrations that would put God chefs to shame. Because of you, we got to see futbol in cake format, baked, assembled and scored in less than a day.

Here you have it, today's tract, swathed in visuals to perhaps beckon to your many variant personalities, whether it be a liberation of the inner gluttonous cake beast or paving way to your future as Cake Boss, Part Deux. I think it'd bide you well to look it over and take many notes.

For the Cake~
(Adapted- Martha Stewart's marble cake)
Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ cup unsalted butter, softened at room temp
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs, room temp
1 tsp vanilla extract
⅔ cup buttermilk, room temp
¼ cup cocoa powder, plus 1 tbsp
¼ cup plus 2 tbsp boiling water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350° F. Keep aside a 9×5 inch loaf pan, greased and floured or spray with nonstick spray .
Whisk together cake flour, baking powder and salt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at time, scraping down sides of bowl when needed.
Mix in vanilla.
Add in flour mixture, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, until all ingredients are combined into one smooth batter
In the now empty bowl that was used to whisk flour, mix cocoa powder with the 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp of boiling water and stir until smooth. Add 1/3 of the cake batter to this and combine well.
Alternate and scoop the batters in a checkerboard pattern, in two layers- chocolate-vanilla-chocolate. Place brown over yellow, yellow over brown when doing second layer.
Swirl the batters with a skewer/knife in zigzags and figure eights for a pretty marbled effect.
Bake 40- 60 minutes, until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Leave in pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto wire rack to let cool.
You can leave plain, frost with buttercream, ganache , fancy the whole show up. Your choice. It's all good.

Notes:

If you use salted butter, like I do, omit the salt in cake ingredients.
For the half dome part of the soccer ball cake, I scooped one batter into the other(brown into yellow).

In a checkerboard pattern, alternate batters in two layers. Swirl these using a skewer or knife.

Swirl it pretty and let it shine.

I should say it's extremely difficult to get this wrong. Any which way your wrist turns, you create cake art.

Marshmallow fondant~
Ingredients:

¼ c unsalted butter, softened or as much needed
16 ounces/1 pound white mini-marshmallows
2 to 5 tablespoons water
2 pounds icing or powdered sugar

Directions:

Have softened butter ready in a widemouthed bowl (for your hands to easily reach )and keep aside.
Place the marshmallows and two tbsp of the water in a very large greased microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on high for 30 seconds and melt the marshmallows. Continue at 30 second intervals, stirring between each 30 seconds, until marshmallows are melted, gooey and completely smooth.
In the bowl itself, place 1/2 of the confectioners' sugar on top of the marshmallow mixture(if your bowl is not big enough, all of this can be done on the countertop). Using a well greased wooden label or greased hands, mix this until roughly combined. Mixture will be very stiff.
Rub your hands thoroughly, in between fingers, backs of hands, with butter mixture, and turn out marshmallow dough onto counter dusted liberally with powdered sugar. Place more sugar on top of this sticky mixture, one cup at time and begin kneading the dough. As you knead, the dough will become workable and pliable. If it does dry and tear, add water-teaspoon at at time- until smooth.
Add confectioner's sugar by cupfuls to the mixture as needed. You may not need all the sugar. Continue kneading until the fondant is smooth and no longer sticky to the touch, 5 to 10 minutes.
Form the fondant into a ball, coat it with a light film of butter mixture and wrap tightly in plastic wrap and place/seal in Ziplock bag squeezing out all air. Refrigerate overnight.
When ready to use, allow the fondant to come to room temperature ( if really hard, microwave at 60% power for a few 30 second intervals until soft) and roll it out onto a flat surface lightly greased with butter/shortening or dusted with cornstarch, sometimes both. I like to coat my work surface with only butter, but if gets "slippery" I add a few sprinkles of cornstarch.

Coloring fondant~

You can separate and color the fondant before it goes into the refrigerator, though sometimes the colors get denser as they sit. I prefer to color as and when I need to use it. Bring to room temperature and knead in a little coloring at a time, using a toothpick. If you're using different colors, wash hands thoroughly between or use food grade gloves as colors will transfer from hands.Wilton gel food colors and Amerigel are the ideal choices when coloring fondant, though with smaller pieces of dough, I've used the liquid drops too- dough consistency may get sticky/soft with it so you have to be careful when/if using liquid coloring.

Additional notes~

You could sub all shortening for the butter. I like the flavor of the butter in the fondant- makes it enjoyably edible.
If your fondant feels too dry, rub it with some butter/ shortening to make it pliable. If it feels too wet/sticky, add more powdered sugar and knead it a bit more.
It's best to let MMF sit, double wrapped, overnight. There have been instances where I've used sans any refrigeration, though it's not advised ;-) If you need to take it out early, see if there are visible sugar specks. If so, knead it through.
MMFondant keeps well when stored double wrapped and sealed in an airtight Ziploc or airtight container, upto 2 months. May keep longer in the refrigerator, though you'd have to worry about odors of other foods /drying out if you had it in that long.

The inside reveal was the best part. The 9x13 base cake was Nigella Lawson's Fudge cake from the FN archives. I spritzed the cakes with some simple syrup before frosting and covering to keep them moist.

Wilton's ball pan makes the whole process of making a ball cake quite easy, complete with templates for your soccer ball's hexagons and pentagons, that can be further traced onto cardstock,then laminated. A good covering of buttercream prepares the base for both cakes to be fondant adhered.Like I said YouTube is a veritable university on how to cover cakes with fondant, shapes, etc. So it would be worth your while to check it out. I made/needed two batches of the marshmallow fondant recipe, prepared the day in advance and pieced and colored accordingly with Wilton gel colors. The black fondant, however, was store bought- way too much work/mess to color fondant black. The "grass" was vanilla buttercream, colored and piped with Wilton's tip #233.

" 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'." Jeremiah 29:11
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Much gratitude and thanks to all my faithful readers, supporters, followers and FB page likers-makes blogging goodeats all the more enjoyable.
I'd however, like to address another issue, one that bothers me to no end, the increasing problem of others lifting (stealing) BFMK photographs/content and passing them off as their own, be it on individual blogs, microblogs, social media, websites. A lot of work goes into all this, from recipe selection/ cooking/ photographing/editing and constructing the posts. Although it's my pleasure and passion to maintain this site, it truly discourages when my images are snagged and pasted elsewhere as another's.
So what I am I getting to? When you need to borrow an image/photograph or post one that appears on my pages, please ask. I promise I won't bite. Further, play fair with attribution- do give credit. I've actually seen pictures with my entire recipe/ notes pasted straight up and no acknowledgement given. But then there are the several positive instances, ones I mention each chance I get, where websites link back and name source. To those, thanks for playing fair. I am grateful.
Through comments below, do ask before taking. Attribute it, with a shoutout/ mention/courtesy link back to my page. Remember... credit where credit is due. I appreciate. God bless.