Marble cake in cocotte

Many of you wanted to have a cake en cocotte recipe again. We had already done some in them, and they are so fantastic that we have not been able to stop repeating. Today's is brought to us by Rosa ( Pemberley Cup&Cakes ), and yes, it's as delicious as it looks. To enjoy!

I have always been fascinated by casseroles full of food, put on the fire with their rhythmic chup-chup from the early hours of the day, letting out those irresistible aromas, often mysterious, throughout the morning until lunchtime.

As a child, I could spend a good time absorbed, contemplating how my mother or my grandmother filled them with an endless number of ingredients, sometimes unknown to me, as they cleaned, chopped or prepared as appropriate. It seemed that anything could fit in there!

Le Creuset Round Iron Cocotte , MasterClass Baguette Board , Kitchen Craft Measuring Spoon Set , Birkmann Cooling Rack and Madagascar Vanilla Extract

Later, not so little anymore, in the rush to experience everything and quickly, those sensations remained as if asleep. However, the inevitable urgency of those wonderful years over, they woke up again. And there were the cast iron cocottes from Le Creuset , which simply reconquered my love for cooking like that, with capital letters.

Most of its virtues are obvious to the naked eye, but the list is practically endless. If you have already lived the experience, you know exactly what I mean. If you still harbor any doubts regarding its performance, I strongly recommend that you try it (or take a look at this post ) and it will solve all of them for you; The only and most difficult to solve will be choosing the color —the range is almost as wide as its advantages—, and then you are alone.

But today I do not bring you any ancestral stew that requires long hours of dedication, but a very simple cake, although not for that reason monotonous. And it is that the versatility of these cocottes is one of its main attractions.

Marbled biscuits are irresistible to me. This capricious design, almost impossible to foresee until you cut and discover new patterns with each cut, does not stop enclosing its own mystery. Come on, if you are careless and it happens to you like me, the odd piece may fall behind the first piece just to see how the next one will be revealed.

Before leaving you with the recipe, I leave you with a simple but important reminder: whenever we use our cocotte in the oven, we must bear in mind that it is not a conventional mold; sudden changes in temperature could damage it, so we will preheat it at the same time that we turn on the oven (even before adding the dough for our cake, as is the case in this case). And don't lose sight of all the essential tips to keep our cocotte impeccable until the last day and even after.

Ingredients (for a 24 cm Ø round cocotte; 12-14 servings)

(All ingredients must be at room temperature, unless otherwise indicated)

• 80ml of semi-skimmed milk
• 45gr of pure unsweetened cocoa powder, sieved
• 325gr of loose wheat flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons of chemical yeast (Royal type)
• ½ teaspoon of baking soda
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• 225gr of unsalted butter
• 250gr of white sugar
• 4 eggs (L)
• 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
• 180gr of unsweetened natural Greek yogurt
• Icing sugar to decorate (optional)

* 1 tablespoon=15 ml ; 1 teaspoon=5ml *

Elaboration

1. Preheat the oven (electric and airless) to 200ºC with heat above and below and place our 24 cm Ø cocotte without a lid halfway up on the oven rack.

2. Before starting to combine the ingredients, it is very important to have them all at hand, previously weighed or measured and at the right temperature, because once we start there is no time to lose if we want to get a correctly baked cake with a perfect crumb.

3. While the oven and cocotte are preheating, in a small saucepan, lightly heat the milk over low heat until it starts to smoke or bubbles appear around it, just 1 minute. Remove from the heat, add the cocoa, previously sifted, and stir with a few rods until completely combined. We let temper.

4. On the other hand, in a large bowl we sift together the flour, chemical yeast, bicarbonate of soda and salt. We booked.

5. In another separate large bowl (if we are going to use an electric mixer , we will attach the paddle accessory), vigorously beat the butter together with the sugar for about 4-5 minutes until obtaining a fluffy texture that is visibly paler in appearance.

6. Next, we add the eggs, always one by one and lightly beaten beforehand, and mix gently; we won't add the next one until the previous one has been fully incorporated. The mix may look “choppy” at this point, but all is well; as soon as we continue mixing the rest of the ingredients, the dough will be perfectly cohesive.

7. Next, add the vanilla extract and mix until combined.

8. Finally, we add the mixture of dry ingredients that we had reserved (point 4), alternating it with the yogurt as follows (the amounts are approximate): we start by adding ⅓ of the dry ingredients, ½ of the yogurt, ⅓ of the ingredients dry ingredients, the remaining ½ of the yogurt and the last ⅓ of the dry ingredients, always mixing just after each addition so that everything is more or less integrated, but without exceeding it or the crumb will be dense and not very spongy.

9. Now divide the dough into two parts, one slightly larger than the other (no need to be too precise here; 60-40 can be fine), add the milk and cocoa mixture to the smaller one and mix with a spatula just enough to get a homogeneous color mixture.

Le Creuset round cocotte , vanilla extract , measuring spoons and Birkmann cooling rack

10. We then remove the cocotte from the oven with the help of some oven mitts or a couple of kitchen towels, place it on a rack or heat-resistant surface and, being very careful not to burn ourselves, grease the interior by applying a thin film of butter with the help of of a long-handled pastry brush (or with release spray ).

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO WORK WITH A CERTAIN QUICKNESS FROM THIS POINT, BECAUSE THE PAN WILL BE VERY HOT AND LEAVING THE DOUGH REST IN EXCESS INSIDE THE COCOTTE OUT OF THE OVEN COULD END UP DAMAGING OUR CAKE.

11. Once the cocotte is ready, we begin by first adding a more or less generous spoonful of white dough in the center. On it, we place another spoonful of cocoa mass and again another one of white mass, always alternating both masses until finishing them. We must ensure at all times that they do not mix too much and that they are well alternated and distributed throughout the interior of the container.

A very useful and practical way of applying the tablespoons of dough in this type of cake is to have a couple of ice cream spoons; We will control the amount of each of the masses at all times and we will work as quickly and cleanly as possible.

12. Once all the dough is added, we pass a skewer or a small spatula through the inside of the dough making a few random grooves to achieve that marbled effect. We end up tapping very gently against the kitchen bench, always on a folded cloth between the cocotte and the surface, so that the dough finishes settling well and thus any air bubbles inside are expelled.

13. Reduce the oven temperature to 180ºC and bake without a lid for about 45-50 minutes until the center is well done (after the first 40 minutes we can check how our cake is going; we already know that each oven has its rhythm). To make sure that it is properly baked, we will insert a skewer in the middle of the cake and check that it comes out clean of crumbs. If not, we'll check every 3-4 minutes until it does.

14. Once our marbled sponge cake is properly baked, remove the cocotte from the oven, place it on a cooling rack and let the sponge cake cool completely inside before unmolding and cutting it (always in that order; see the Notes section below). If we have greased the interior well, it will unmold without any difficulty; in fact, as it cools down, we will see that the cake detaches itself from the inside of the container. Even so, before unmolding, it is advisable to shake the cocotte with the cake very gently until you notice that it has completely detached and thus achieve a perfect unmolding.

15. If we feel like it, we can sprinkle a little icing sugar on the cake, already cold, before serving.

It is kept at room temperature for 3-4 days, well protected from the air (we can even keep it inside the cocotte closed with its lid).

Chemex coffee maker , Le Creuset mugs and Tokio Design Textured porcelain plates

Grades:

- Whenever we are going to cut our biscuits, we will preferably use a long and well-sharpened serrated knife , in this way we will obtain clean and precise cuts without crumbling the biscuit.

- We can also use a cocotte with a smaller diameter (22 cm Ø, for example), although the baking time will be somewhat longer, which will have to be checked after the first 45 minutes.

Believe me when I tell you that there is no breakfast or snack (or mid-morning snack, or even midnight) that does not light up with a piece of this fantastic marbled sponge cake. What would you eat right now? It's understandable, and if you finally do, be sure to tell us!

All the best,
Pink