Halloween: The Holiday
We are getting dangerously close to the end of October, and you know what that means…Halloween! While it may be better known as an American holiday, Halloween actually has its origins in Scandinavian and Celtic history. Looking back, there are 16th century traditions, such as apple bobbing and “guising,” or dressing up in costumes and going door to door reciting verses in exchange for food, that we still take part in today. You can read more about the Scandinavian history of the holiday in our blog post from last October! Plus, being Danish-American, we grew up celebrating it. So, even though you might not associate it with Scandinavia, we still want to share fun recipes and decoration ideas with you!
Halloween: The Food
Obviously, Halloween is all about the candy – there’s no doubt about that! But one of our favorite trends in recent years is everyone sharing their spooky and creative recipes online, like cupcakes decorated like eyeballs or cookies that look like severed fingers. Just Google “Halloween recipes” and we can promise that you won’t struggle for choice in the results! If you aren’t into the bloody sweets, there are “prettier” ones too, like festive orange and black baked goods that set the mood without venturing into lots of gore. And unsurprisingly, that’s the route we have decided to go down with our orange and chocolate marble swirl cake. Read on to learn how to make it!
Today’s Recipe
About a year and a half ago, we shared a recipe for “marmorkage” or marble cake. This is basically a vanilla and chocolate swirl pound cake, and it is seriously delicious. It’s moist, sweet, and soft, with a combination of two of the best flavors to exist. What could be better than that? Well, add a bit of orange zest and food coloring at the right time of year and voila – you have a Halloween cake! And another of the best flavor combinations possible: chocolate and orange.
Festive and delicious!
The best part about this cake is that it is just so perfectly festive for this time of year. You don’t even have to wait until Halloween, and you can also make it after because it’s just a cute cake! If you have a Bundt pan, you can even double the recipe and make a bigger version – then it will really be a show stopper. Make this alongside other more Halloween-y desserts if you’re hosting a Halloween party, or decorate it with icing and Halloween sprinkles! The perfect balance between festive and classy 🙂
Ingredients
The ingredients are classic pound cake ingredients: sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and salt. Then, you just need flavors – cocoa powder for the chocolate batter and orange zest/extract, vanilla, and food coloring for the orange batter. We used natural food coloring but if you want a brighter orange color, feel free to use artificial! Make sure your ingredients are room temperature – this is absolutely key when it comes to making a pound cake. Otherwise, your batter might split and this could affect the texture of the cake.
How to make Marmorkage
The process is important as well if you want the cake to have a soft and moist texture, which it should. First, cream together the butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. You should stop the mixer a few times to scrape down the side of the bowl before continuing. Next, add the eggs one at a time. Let each egg become fully incorporated before you add the next. If your batter looks lumpy at this point, it may be splitting, but just carry on and it may begin to look smoother when you add the dry ingredients! Add vanilla extract and mix again. Then, alternate adding milk and dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) until you have a smooth batter. Divide this in half, adding orange zest/extract and coloring to one half and cocoa powder to the other half. When pouring the batter into the loaf tin, follow the instructions in the recipe below carefully to get the intended marble effect. Bake, decorate however you like, and enjoy!
Halloweenkage (Halloween Marble Loaf Cake)
Ingredients
- 200 grams sugar
- 200 grams unsalted butter, softened
- 3 large eggs, room temperature
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 100 ml milk, room temperature (you can pop this in the microwave for a short amount of time to bring up to room temperature)
- 200 grams all-purpose flour
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)
- 15 grams cocoa powder, unsweetened
- Orange food coloring, as needed (you may need to mix red and yellow coloring together to get orange!)
- 0.5 tsp orange extract (optional, if using orange zest)
- Orange zest, from 1/2 orange (optional, if using orange extract)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 F (160 C). Butter a loaf pan and line with parchment paper. We like to lay a piece of parchment paper across the pan for easy removal after baking!
- Add softened butter and sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer.
- Cream together the butter and sugar until very light and fluffy, using the paddle attachment. Make sure to scrape down the sides a few times.
- Make sure the eggs are room temperature, so that your batter doesn't split! If your room is quite cold, or you forgot to put the eggs out earlier, place the eggs in a bowl of warm water for around ten minutes and they will warm up. Add one egg and run the mixer until fully incorporated, then scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- Repeat with the remaining two eggs, adding them one at a time and mixing well. If you find that your batter is looking split/curdled, try to keep mixing on high speed after scraping down the sides. If it's still split, try adding a few tablespoons of flour to get it to hold together.
- Add the vanilla extract to the eggs, butter, and sugar mixture. Mix together.
- Measure out the milk in a bowl/cup and mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a separate bowl.
- Sift in half of the dry ingredients and mix together until just incorporated (probably around 10-15 seconds). In place of sifting, you can whisk your dry ingredients together very well before adding to get rid of any lumps.
- Then add half of your room temperature milk and mix until incorporated.
- Sift in the remaining dry ingredients, mix, then add the remaining milk and mix again.
- Once incorporated, give the mixture a few folds with a spatula to make sure everything from the bottom has been mixed.
- Now, split the batter evenly into two bowls.
- Add cocoa powder into one of the bowls and mix together with a spoon until fully combined. Set aside.
- With the other half of the batter, add in orange zest from one orange or about 1/2 tsp of orange extract (the extract goes a long way, so be careful of adding too much!).
- Then add in orange food coloring (this will be so dependent on the type of food coloring you use, but we added together yellow and red natural food coloring until it became a light orange color! Feel free to use whatever you like, but it may need way less or a little more coloring depending on the type you use!).
- Mix the batter together until you get to the orange color you like.
- Now we're going to mix the batter together in the loaf tin to create a marbling effect. On the bottom layer, add one third of the orange batter, but in three offset dollops (top left corner, middle right section, and bottom left corner).
- Then add the chocolate batter in the spaces where you didn't add the orange batter – top right corner, middle left, and bottom right corner. You should have an alternating pattern of batter on this bottom layer.
- Then add the next third of the orange batter on top of the chocolate batter that you just added.
- Add the next third of the chocolate batter on top of the orange batter (the layer on the bottom, not the layer you just added).
- Repeat one last time with the remaining third of the two batters, adding the chocolate on top of the orange and the orange on top of the chocolate.
- Tap the tin on the counter a few times to distribute the batter evenly.
- Using a skewer or a knife, make a zigzag pattern back and forth horizontally all the way down the cake.
- Remove the knife, wipe it off, and make a few vertical zigzag lines as well.
- Tap the pan against the counter a few times again.
- Bake for 55 minutes (could take up to an hour to an hour and ten minutes if not using convection settings), or until a cake tester/skewer comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven, let sit for about 5 minutes, then remove from the pan and place on a cooling rack.
- Once cool, slice and enjoy!
