This Red Velvet Marble Loaf Cake is delicious and so, so pretty. It’s topped with cream cheese frosting that’s always so good with red velvet. This marbling technique with the zebra style is gorgeous and really easy to accomplish. And with the red colour and its patterns, it’s a perfect cake for Valentine’s Day.
Why this red velvet marble loaf cake works
This Red Velvet Marble Cake recipe is perfect for any centrepiece. The shape and colours inside are really pretty and will help you dress up any table. I’ve made this zebra pattern before when I made my Zebra Bundt Cake using chocolate batter instead of red velvet. The resulting marble cake is really beautiful! Both recipes make a delicious cake and you can make them either in a loaf pan or in a bundt pan. It’s not only fun to look at, it’s delicious, too! The crumb is soft and moist and the flavour combinations in both the chocolate version and this Red Velvet Marble Loaf Cake are great.
Ingredients for this Red Velvet Marble Loaf cake
If you’re looking to make the perfect Red Velvet Marble Loaf Cake, you first need a good base batter. This recipe is based on my Vanilla Bundt Cake recipe with a few tweaks. This recipe is easy to put together and it will make the best crumb.
- Unsalted butter at room temperature: Butter adds flavour and fat to a batter formula. We need fat in a cake to make it moist.
- Vegetable oil: Vegetable oil will add more moisture and because it has a higher evaporation point than butter, it will stay in the cake. I don’t like to use only oil though because it leaves a fatty feeling in the mouth when you eat a slice.
- Salt: Salt is always needed, even in sweet recipes, to balance the flavours.
- Granulated sugar: The sugar will add the sweetness to the cake. I didn’t use brown sugar because we want a cleaner sweetness flavour profile whereas brown sugar adds a caramel profile.
- Eggs: The eggs will help with the texture of the cake and help it rise in the oven.
- Vanilla extract or essence: Just a dash of a good quality vanilla extract will add a lovely background flavour to this Red Velvet Marble Loag Cake.
- Milk: Milk will add more moisture to the formula and help the batter have a better overall texture. You can use regular milk or go for skimmed, lactose-free or even vegetable.
- All-purpose flour: The flour will bring structure to our cake and form the final batter.
- Baking powder: Baking powder will generate air in the cake so that it’s lovely and fluffy.
Ingredients for the marbling
Once you have the base batter, we are going to divide it in half. One half will stay as the white batter and the other half of the batter will be modified into the red velvet cake batter. I like to weigh the total batter using a kitchen scale and divide it exactly in two. These are the ingredients that will transform our base into red velvet:
- Unsweetened cocoa powder: Red velvet has a small amount of cocoa powder in it, not enough to make it a chocolate batter but it definitely adds a hint of chocolate.
- Liquid red food colouring; To make it really into a *red* velvet marble loaf cake we need red food colouring. I use liquid food colouring which is the easiest for me to find at the supermarket. If you rather use gel food colouring, you can add a few drops at a time until you have the desired deep red colour.
- Apple cider vinegar: The vinegar will add a soft, velvety texture to the cake, it won’t taste like vinegar, don’t worry! You can also switch it to white vinegar if you prefer.
Method for the batter
The batter for this Red Velvet Marble Loaf Cake is really simple to make, there’s nothing complicated about it. You can either make it in a large bowl and use a hand-held whisk or go for an electric mixer instead. If you use a stand mixer, make sure to stop halfway through the steps and use a rubber spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl. This will ensure that the ingredients that tend to stick to the surface of the bowl of a stand mixer get fully incorporated. Here’s the method for the base cake batter:
- Beat the butter with the sugar and oil until it becomes clearer in colour and looks fluffy. You can do it using an electric mixer or with a whisk.
- Add the eggs and beat again until well incorporated and it should also look aerated. From mixing, the batter should thicken and unstick from the walls of the bowl.
- Add the milk and mix. It will look curdled, but with the flour, it will go back to normal.
- Add the rest of the dry ingredients: flour, vanilla extract, salt and baking powder and mix.
How to make a zebra marbling
Once you have the base vanilla batter, you will remove half of the batter and place it in a separate bowl. To that bowl, you will add the ingredients for the red velvet marbling and mix them together. Now, you have one vanilla cake batter and one red velvet batter. To marble those two you can just place bits of one colour and the other in the loaf pan and then use a wooden toothpick to marble them. However, I love zebra marbling, it’s a great effect and those red velvet swirls come out so pretty! To make the, place each of the cake batters in a piping bag with a round nozzle. Make a line along the centre of the loaf cake pan with one flavour, going back and forth two times. Then, on top of that go with two lines of the other flavour. It’s very important that you make the lines exactly on top of the previous one for the full effect.
Baking and storing
Every time we’re making cake we want to have the perfect baking time. Underbaking will make the cake deflate when you take it out of the oven, and an over-baked cake will be very dry. The total time this cake needs is 45 minutes to 1 hour. To test if it’s ready, you can use a skewer and insert it at the centre. If it comes out clean or with moist crumbs, it’s ready. Once it’s cooked to perfection, remove it from the oven and place it on a cooling rack to cool down. After it’s cool, you can store it at room temperature in an air-tight container for up to 5 days.
Turn this recipe into a Red Velvet Marble Bundt Cake
I developed this Red Velvet Marble Loaf Cake for a 22×11 centimetre or 8×4 inch loaf pan. However, just by doubling the quantities you can turn it into a marble Bundt Cake just as easily. To make the zebra marbling in a bundt pan, you will go around the inside bundt pan, drawing a circle around the base with the batter. Then, the other batter will draw a circle exactly on top of that and so on until you use up all the batter. It makes for the most perfect marble cake, you will love the result!
The cream cheese frosting
Cream cheese frosting is by default my go-to frosting for red velvet. The frosting for this Red Velvet Marble Loaf Cake is really easy to make and just requires 3 ingredients: cream cheese, icing sugar and milk. The cream cheese has to be at room temperature so that you can easily mix it with the other ingredients. You can easily make it in a small bowl and use a whisk since it’s a small amount. Make sure that you allow the cake to cool completely before you add the frosting on top or it will quickly melt away. If you’re a fan of red velvet like me, here are a few recipes that I’ll think you’ll like. Also, let me know if you would like to see more recipes from me with this flavour.
Red Velvet Marble Cake
Ingredients
For the batter
- 120 g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 30 g vegetable or canola oil
- 260 g sugar
- 2 eggs
- 160 ml milk
- 260 g all-purpose flour
- 1¼ tsp baking powder
- ½ tbsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract or essence
For the red velvet marbling
- 3 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tsp liquid red food colouring
- 2 tsp apple cider vinegar or white vinegar
For the cream cheese frosting
- 110 g cream cheese at room temperature
- 50 g icing sugar
- 1½ tbsp milk
Instructions
For the batter
- Beat the butter with the sugar and oil until it becomes clearer in colour and looks fluffy. You can do it using an electric mixer or with a whisk.
- Add the eggs and beat again until well incorporated and it should also look aerated. From mixing, the batter should thicken and unstick from the walls of the bowl.
- Add the milk and mix. It will look curdled, but with the flour, it will go back to normal.
- Add the flour, vanilla extract, salt and baking powder and mix.
For the marbling
- Divide the batter in two. I like to weigh the total batter and divide it exactly into two parts. To one of the halves, add the ingredients for the red velvet marbling and mix well to incorporate.
- Line a 22x11cm/8x4in with baking paper.
- Place the vanilla batter in a piping bag with a round tip of about 1cm/⅓in in diameter. Form a thick vanilla batter line along the centre of the base of the pan. Exactly on top of that one, pipe a red velvet batter line. On top of that one, make a vanilla line and go on like this until you have used up all the batter. It's very important that you make the line exactly on top of the other to get the zebra effect. Alternatively, you can also do a classic marbling by adding bits of each colour of batter in the pan and then using a knife or skewer to marble. Tap the pan against your surface to level the batter.
- Optional: cut thin strips of cold butter and place them along the centre of the batter. This will make it open evenly at the centre.
- Bake the cake in a preheated oven at 180°C/350°F for 45 min – 1 hour or until a serrated knife comes out clean from the middle. It's important not to overbake it so it doesn't dry up. If you have an electric oven, check the cake at the 30-minute mark to make sure it's not going overly golden on top. If it's golden enough, switch to only bottom heat or place aluminium foil on top.
- Release the cake from the pan while it's still hot.
For the cream cheese frosting
- Wait until the cake is totally cold to glaze it.
- In a bowl, add the cream cheese, sugar and milk. With a small whisk, mix everything to get a smooth glaze.
- Spread the glaze on the cake and let it dry a bit, at least 30min before cutting.
