This marble pound cake is a great recipe to have in your back pocket. Use it as a building block to other desserts, or serve it all on its own. You get your chocolate and vanilla too!

What is better than pound cake? Chocolate pound cake. Or in this case, a marble pound cake. Get the best of both worlds and make this easy, from-scratch marble pound cake for your next dessert!

Pound cake is such a versatile dessert. You can have it as the bottom of an epic ice cream sundae. You can cube it up and stick it in a trifle. You can pipe some whip cream on there and eat it as is. You can even grill pound cake. Yup. It happens. And it is awesome.

Traditionally pound cake gets its name from including a pound of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. Obviously that has now changed since the pound cake was originally created back in the 1700’s, and it is more about the texture than exact ingredient proportions.

This cake is sweet, and dense, and full of flavor. The chocolate is kicked up a lot by using Malted Chocolate Milk mix, such as Ovaltine’s Chocolate Malt powder. It is my kids’ favorite, and I thought that it would make an awesome addition to this pound cake.

The topping is totally optional on this cake. If you do want to pipe on some ganache, I use the ganache portion of this recipe, cooled down a bit, and then piped onto the top of the cake.

There are so many great varieties of pound cake! There are buttermilk pound cakes, which I totally love, and unique pound cakes like a strawberry swirl pound cake. But even with endless possibilities, I hope that you’ll try out my marble version!

Marble Pound Cake

Print

Ingredients

• 2 sticks salted butter, softened
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/8 cup sour cream
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup powdered malted chocolate milk mix, powdered regular chocolate milk mix, or non-dairy hot cocoa mix (I used Ovaltine Malted Chocolate Milk Mix)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about five minutes. Slowly add in the flour, and mix to combine. Don't over-mix!
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, and sour cream. Slowly add into batter and mix just until combined. Remove 1/3 of the batter from the bowl, and put into a separate bowl. Mix in the chocolate milk mix until well combined.
4. Place the vanilla batter into a tube pan that's been prepared with baking spray. Spread out evenly in the pan. Place spoonfuls of the chocolate batter all around the top of the vanilla batter. Use a butter knife to swirl the chocolate into the vanilla. Tap the pan several times on the counter to distribute batter and eliminate any gaps.
5. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, and then invert onto serving tray.

Need more dessert ideas? Check these out!

Nut-free Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

Blueberry Pudding Lemon Cake