Black-and-White Chocolate Marble Pound Cake with Vanilla Bean and Black Cocoa Glazes

Black and White Chocolate Marble Pound Cake with Vanilla Bean and Black Cocoa Glazes. Recipe Development and Food Styling by Ben Mims

It never gets old to marble chocolate and plain batters into a pound cake. For a modern update, however, we use black cocoa for the chocolate batter, which gives it a dark richness, and white chocolate in the “plain” batter to offset the bitter cocoa with sweetness. In this recipe by Ben Mims, we scoop both batters alternately into the Bundt pan using a spring- loaded ice cream scoop to create the marbled design without swirling the batters together, but feel free to pour both batters into the pan and swirl the batter with a table knife if you like. 

4.5 from 2 reviews
Black-and-White Chocolate Marble Pound Cake with Vanilla Bean and Black Cocoa Glazes
 
Makes 1 (10-inch) Bundt Cake
Ingredients
  • 2 cups (454 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature and divided
  • 3 cups (600 grams) granulated sugar, divided
  • 3 teaspoons (12 grams) vanilla extract,divided
  • 4 large egg whites (120 grams),room temperature
  • 4 ounces (115 grams) white chocolate, melted
  • 2 ¼ cups (281 grams) cake flour, divided
  • 2 teaspoons (6 grams) kosher salt, divided
  • 2 large eggs (100 grams), room temperature
  • 4 large egg yolks (74 grams), room temperature
  • ¾ cup (64 grams) black (Dutch process) cocoa powder*, sifted
  • ½ cup (120 grams) whole buttermilk, room temperature
  • Vanilla Bean Glaze (recipe follows)
  • Black Cocoa Glaze (recipe follows)
Instructions
  1. Butter and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat 1 cup (227 grams) butter, 11⁄2 cups (300 grams) sugar, and 1 ½ teaspoons (6 grams) vanilla at medium speed until flu y and pale, at least 6 minutes. Add egg whites, one at a time, beating well after each addition, about 15 seconds. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl with a rubber spatula. With mixer on medium-high speed, add melted white chocolate, beating until smooth, about 1 minute. Add 1 ½ cups (187 grams) flour and 1 teaspoon (3 grams) salt, and stir with a rubber spatula just until combined. Scrape white batter into a bowl, and set aside.
  3. Return bowl to stand mixer. With the paddle attachment, beat remaining 1 cup (227 grams) butter, remaining 1 ½ cups (300 grams) sugar, and remaining 1 ½ teaspoons (6 grams) vanilla at medium speed until fluffy and pale, at least 6 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, about 15 seconds. Add egg yolks, two at a time, beating well after each addition, about 15 seconds. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl with a rubber spatula. With mixer on medium-high speed, beat until smooth, about 1 minute. Add cocoa, remaining ¾ cup (94 grams) flour, and remaining 1 teaspoon (3 grams) salt. With mixer on low speed, add buttermilk, beating just until batter comes together. Scrape bottom and sides of bowl with a rubber spatula, and stir just until combined.
  4. Using a large (2- to 3-ounce) spring-loaded ice cream scoop, alternately scoop white and black batters into prepared pan. Tap pan lightly on counter to settle batter.
  5. Place pan in a cold oven, and bake at 300°F (150°C) until lightly browned on top and a wooden pick inserted near center comes out clean, 1 ½ to 2 hours. (This bake time depends on how long it takes your oven to preheat. Start checking after 1 ½ hours, and continue baking in 10-minute intervals until cake is done.) Let cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Invert cake onto wire rack, and unmold from pan. Let cool completely.
  6. Alternately spoon Vanilla Bean Glaze and Black Cocoa Glaze onto cake, letting each one drip down grooves of cake. Alternatively, pour Black Cocoa Glaze over cake, and let stand until hardened, about 10 minutes. Pour Vanilla Bean Glaze over top, and let stand until hardened, about 10 minutes.
Notes
*Black cocoa is available online or in specialty food stores. We used King Arthur Flour Black Cocoa, but any brand will work. Black cocoa is a deeper color than regular cocoa and further alkalized—or “Dutch processed”—to remove virtually all acidity. To make sure it doesn’t dry out the cake batter, this recipe has extra buttermilk to provide more moisture and acidity.

4.5 from 2 reviews
Vanilla Bean Glaze
 
Makes about ½ cup
Ingredients
  • 1 cup (120 grams) confectioners’ sugar, sifted
  • 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons (40 grams) heavy whipping cream
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½ plump Bourbon-Madagascar vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped
Instructions
  1. In a small saucepan, combine all ingredients. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth and no lumps remain. Pour glaze into a bowl, and let cool until it falls of a spoon in a thick, heavy stream.

4.5 from 2 reviews
Black Cocoa Glaze
 
Makes about ½ cup
Ingredients
  • ¾ cup (90 grams) confectioners’ sugar, sifted
  • ¼ cup (21 grams) black (Dutch process) cocoa powder, sifted
  • 3 tablespoons (45 grams) heavy whipping cream
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Instructions
  1. In a small saucepan, combine all ingredients. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth and no lumps remain. Pour glaze into a bowl, and let cool until it falls off a spoon in a thick, heavy stream.
Notes
These recipes call to cream the butter and sugar together for 6 to 8 minutes, an inordinately long time for a cake recipe. Because traditional pound cakes don’t use chemical leavening, all their lift comes from the air whipped into the butter and sugar during this step, so it’s important to get as much air in the batter as possible. The long beating time ensures this lift and that the butter and sugar will easily absorb the eggs and other ingredients, producing a supersmooth, even crumb once baked.

 

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13 COMMENTS

    • Hi Dolapo,
      thank you for reaching out! You will put the cake in the oven that has not been turned on yet. After you put the cake inside the cold oven, you will turn the oven on to 300 degrees and keep the cake in there (even as it pre-heats) to the desired temp. Let us know if you have any more questions. Happy Baking!

  1. Hi! We’re are currently in the process of making this and had a question. We had been using the oven for other things and it wasn’t cold. Will that mess up the recipe?

    • I made this and it was incredible! However my Chocolate batter was much thinner than the vanilla – was this the case for anyone else? It tasted great but mine was not nearly as pretty

  2. I finally got around to baking this. Although I have made pound cakes that started in cold ovens this one with the two flavors was different. My cake took close to 2 hours to bake to be done. I kept checking it every 10 minutes and it was still very wet in the center. My electric oven is only 3 years old works perfectly for everything else. That being said, it was baked perfectly. But the one thing I found is that is has a burnt taste to it. It might be the top crust (which became the bottom) or something, which was not burned but well done. And the icing covered the side crust.
    Also the batter came up so high in the pan that I made another small bundt pan with it.
    Not sure I would make it again or maybe I would peel off the top layer before inverting it.
    But many of my friends enjoyed it and took the rest home.
    Question. Have you tried putting it in a preheated oven? Wonder what the difference would be.
    Thanks for an interesting and pretty looking cake.

  3. For the vanilla bean glaze it says, “seeds scraped and reserved”. That’s a little confusing to me. If all the ingredients are being combined right away, why are the vanilla bean seeds being reserved? Should I simply be scraping the seeds from 1/2 half of a vanilla bean and adding them to sugar, whipping cream, and salt?

    • Hi Anne,

      Thanks for reaching out! That is correct– you will want to add the vanilla bean seeds to the milk cream mixture. The pod you can save for another use– like homemade vanilla extract!

  4. For the vanilla bean glaze, do we make the glaze with the bean in the pot and then remove the bean? It sounds like the seeds don’t go into the glaze and should be reserved. How do I reserve them?

    • Hi Kim,

      Great question! You will want to use just the vanilla bean seeds in the glaze. You can reserve the rest of the vanilla bean and use it to make homemade vanilla extract, or add it to a container of sugar to scent the sugar over time.

    • Hi Amanda,

      Thank you for your question! This recipe relies upon eggs as its main leavener, with the creamed butter and sugar also adding air to the batter. You’ll find that most pound cakes don’t utilize chemical leaveners (or include very little) because the desired consistency is a dense, rich cake.

      Hope this helps, and happy baking!

  5. Just baked this cake yesterday. Use my individual bundt cake pans (4 inch) instead of one big one. After 25 minutes I started checking them. So good and so cute. Didn’t put the glazes on them, I just put a little whipped cream with fresh berries and served the cakes warm. This one is a keeper and I will be making this again.

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