Peanut Butter Marble Cake

It's a pity that the original name for this flavour-packed cake is such an ugly mouthful - Chocolate Mocha Peanut Butter Marble Cake, although it's hard to convey all the information any other way. The peanut butter runs right through the cake batter, which is then divided in half, and one part flavoured with a mocha mixture, while chocolate chips are added to the other part.

The only change I made to the cake recipe was with the Mocha flavouring. I didn't have any Camp coffee essence, and wanted it to be more chocolatey, so I used a tablespoon of coffee granules and a tablespoon of cocoa mixed to a thick paste with a tablespoon of flour from the recipe quantity and 2 tablespoons of cold water.

I baked the cake in a 9"(22cm) springform tin, as I don't have a bundt tin - it took about 10 minutes longer to cook.



I used plain chocolate with 86% cocoa solids - I prefer using chopped chocolate bars for most cakes as I really like the irregularity of large and small pieces (right down to crumb sized).

I made a small quantitiy of frosting, rather than using the apricot glaze, by mixing about 100g icing sugar, a tablespoon of cocoa and a heaped tablespoon of smooth peanut butter to a paste with warm water, and used a piping bag to drizzle a lattice pattern over the cake.

This is a fairly heavy cake - there isn't a great deal of raising agent in the mixture - but the eggs and peanut butter keep it quite moist, and we prefer this type of cake to those with a really light airy texture, which look more substantial than they really are.