My mum always encouraged me to cook from an early age and I loved making cakes.  I soon realised that if you could make a basic sponge you could then make it more exciting by tweaking the original recipe or decorating it in a fancy way.  This marble cake, that my granny taught me to make, is deceptively simple, you make one batch of the cake mixture and just tweak it at the end.  My nephew loves putting the swirls in at the end; sometimes he gets a little over-enthusiastic and it isn’t marbled so much as mixed thoroughly!  I decided to make this to send to my grandparents when my dad went to visit.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the finished article, but you’ll get the idea!

You will need: 175g margarine/ butter, 175 caster sugar, 3 beaten eggs, 125g plain flour, 15ml baking powder, 2.5ml vanilla essence, 25g cocoa and 20ml milk.

Preheat the oven to 190°C/ 375°F and grease and line a 20cm square baking tin.

Cream the margarine/ butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time.  Sieve the flour and baking powder together and fold into the creamed mixture.  Add the vanilla essence and mix well.  Spoon about half of the mixture into your baking tin in random splodges (isn’t that a great word?!).

Add the cocoa and milk into the remaining mixture, making sure they are well mixed.  Spoon the cocoa mixture into the spaces in the baking tin.  Use a skewer to gently mix the two colours, don’t do this too much!

Carefully smooth the top, I tend to do this by bashing the bottom of the tray on the worktop so that the mixture settles.  Bake for about 40 mins.  Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.  It seems to keep for ages in an airtight tin.