Mabul Cake

The cake I baked on Friday that was gobbled up by Sunday morning

First, an explanation for those that do not speak Hebrew. Mabul in Hebrew means flood. This post ideally should have gone up last week, but the cake was not baked until Friday, and the post was not ruminated over until Shabbat, and on Sunday I did JPIX, and after that…well, here it is. I try to make marble cake for Parshat Noach, the section of the Torah about the flood. This year I took Batya’s simple cake recipe (the one I had previously used for orange cake, but no orange in this one, just vanilla for flavor) and divided it in two, one with some cocoa (about 1/4 cup) and one without. I used three cups of flour, and I mixed some chocolate chips into the batter.

The cake itself came out delicious. And no one seemed to care that my lights and darks were not very pronounced. No one except me, however. So in preparing this post I put the picture in Photoshop and made it look a little more marbly (mabully?):

Darkened marble cake with brightness tool and color balance tool — Darkened with brightness tool and color balance tool

Does it look more like a marble cake now? Maybe next year I’ll melt some dark chocolate and drizzle it throughout the cake batter as I put in the pan. Any suggestions?

Another fun idea for this parsha by Juggling Frogs: Rainbow Menu

Post about this week’s parsha, Lech Lecha:
Avraham Ha-Ivra/the Hebrew (Daniel Saunders)

Categories: Jewish, parsha, recipes Tagged: baked goods, cake

The Babysitter says

My mother had bought marble cake last shabbos, and someone had commented that it's mobble cake for Parshas Noach and I thought that was so original. But now it looks like it's a common thing.

cool, I notice a difference between the 2 pictures, but you did such an excellent job photoshopping it, that I wouldn't have noticed unless you said something.

and the cake looks great!
and finally something that's not too adultish! :-)

Ilana-Davita says

I had never heard of Mabul cake before. Yes we can see a difference between the two photos.
Thanks for linking to my blog.

Lorri says

Yummy, save a piece for me...I love mabul cake! My grandmother used to make it...years back.

Leora says

Lorri, all gone. Did she know about the punning for Parshat Noach, or was it really just a delicious marble cake? Wish she could teach me how to get it to look swirly.

Jientje says

It looks delicious!!

Batya says

Thanks for mentioning my recipe. It's really easy and the basis of an infinite number of cakes.

Laura says

oh, marble and mabul . . . what a cute pun! How are you layering the two batters? If the the dark batter is not dark enough, you could add more cocoa, of course, but I think the layering method is important, too. Easiest to put one color on bottom, the other on top and then maybe just a little swirl with a knife. Over swirling make the colors less distinct.
I am fond of marble chiffon, although that is a little more involved to make: http://pragmaticattic.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/marble-chiffon-cake/

I did do all that, one color on top of each other and swirled as I went along. I probably over-swirled in some places and under-swirled in other.

In any case, this year's cake was delicious, because I used a rich chocolate cake batter with applesauce and chocolate chips and a blonde cake with orange (real orange) flavoring. It's almost all gone.

Thanks for the note!

Oh yum! That sounds so much tastier than just one batter, half with a little cocoa added. What a great idea to make two completely different batters.

Yeah, the only problem is two totally different batters don't always blend so easily. But my family seems happy - they loved the rich flavors.

I was going through my archives and realized that I have a recipe for marble cupcakes (an easier recipe than the marble chiffon cake)
http://pragmaticattic.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/easy-dairy-free-vanilla-chocolate-swirl-cupcakes/