Marble Cake with Satin Icing

I follow Martha Stewart's boards, and sometimes they are really awesome. I saw her Chocolate-Vanilla Marble Cakes and decided to try it. It uses a homemade yellow cake batter, which was pretty good. I do not have cake flour on hand ever, so I used this substitute from Joy the Baker. You then divide the batter in half, and to one half add (already combined) 6 T. hot water and 1/2 c. cocoa powder and stir. This also tasted good.

Problems arose when I used my loaf pans. I have two largish Pyrex pans, and the recipe calls for four small (possibly metal) ones. I did the swirling far too many times and ended up with an interior of the cake that was less marbled than I wanted. If I had only used larger dollops fewer times, the effect would likely have been better. Because my pans were larger, I baked longer, which made sense. I only wish I had started checking my cakes a little sooner, as they were a little dry for my taste.

My husband and I had some friends over for dinner, and I had planned to serve this as dessert and thought it could use some sort of glaze or icing. I settled on this one from AllRecipes.com. It was thicker than I imagined and would be better on a Bundt cake as shown. I was hoping for a thinner glaze, but the taste was good. It also seemed to go a little grainy after I added the vanilla at the end.

My other beef with this cake was that it didn't stay good for very long. Those friends I mentioned brought dessert, so mine stayed on the counter. I was very good and didn't eat it, but when we went to serve it for dessert three days later, it was no longer edible. The taste was off...kind of...fermenty.

Bottom line:
I wouldn't mind trying it again, but maybe with a boxed yellow cake mix with the chocolate mixture added. The home-made batter and cake flour substitute was more than I really wanted to do that afternoon. I'd also choose a different glaze and start checking the cakes around 45 minutes, not an hour.

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