Marble Cake Recipe Neapolitan

Recipe: Marble Cake Recipe »

Marble Cake Recipe

This classic Neapolitan marble cake combines strawberry, chocolate and vanilla swirls. It's buttery, moist and topped with pink buttercream. It's the perfect show stopping birthday cake with a retro twist!

About This Marble Cake Recipe

Marble Cake Recipe

Marble cake is a classic cake made with three flavours: strawberry, chocolate and vanilla usually served with a pink buttercream icing. It's a delicious classic cake and I love cutting into it to see the marbling swirls in each layer.

This year I offered to make a birthday cake for Laura. She loves classic slices and cakes and she mentioned marble cake. You can get all kinds of marble cakes - chocolate and vanilla is a classic marble cake but she loves the tri colour or neapolitan marble cake made like the classic CWA (Country Women's Association) one. Her gorgeous mother Sheryl loves retro food and she has passed this onto Laura.

I don't have a CWA cookbook but I went to the next best source: the Edmonds NZ cookbook who have a fantastic recipe for marble cake. I wouldn't change a thing about their recipe. It worked well as it was. I did add some timings and notes to their recipe just to help the whole baking process. 

And please don't be alarmed with the quantities of ingredients, this cake serves 24 people. But I'll also show you how to make it a regular sized cake too!

Video How To Make Marble Cake

Video: How to Make a Marble Cake

Ingredients for a Neapolitan Marble Cake

Marble Cake Recipe

Eggs - the larger the eggs, the more rise you'll get out of your cake

Caster or superfine sugar - White sugar is too coarse for cake making, always use caster or superfine sugar.

Cake flour - this can be bought at the supermarket and makes softer cakes. You can also make it at home. To make 1 cup/150g/5.2ozs of cake flour replace 2 tablespoons of plain all purpose flour with cornflour/fine cornstarch and whisk well.

Baking powder - to help the cake rise. Make sure that it is still in date.

Butter - I always use salted butter for everything.

Vanilla extract or paste - artificial vanilla also works here and is less expensive. I like using vanilla bean paste for the frosting as the liquid vanilla essence or extract can make the buttercream looser in texture.

Pink food colouring - you don't need a fancy one, any supermarket food colouring will work here as we are just using 1 drop.

Strawberry or raspberry flavouring - choose your favourite cake flavouring.

Cocoa powder - to colour the chocolate cake. Make sure to sift this first.

Pure icing or powdered sugar - always go for pure icing sugar, not icing sugar mixture

Milk - full cream, skim or alt milks will work here.

Maraschino cherries - I found these at a liquor shop. You want cherries with the stems.

Simple syrup - to moisten the cake if you've baked it 2 days before. Not needed if you have freshly baked the cake on the day or 1 day before. To make simple syrup boil equal parts sugar and water for 5 minutes until clear and cool. It is also great to have on hand for cocktails.

Tips For Making Marble Cake

Marble Cake Recipe

1 - This cake is perfect for a birthday cake and does not need any refrigeration once baked and iced.

2 - Make sure to use eggs that are room temperature and to whisk them for the specified time (10 minutes total) as this creates the voluminous base for the cake. For this reason I don't recommend making this cake unless you have an electric beater as it will be too tiring to whisk by hand.

3 - Don't swirl the mixture too much when you mix the three colour batter. As long as you alternate the batter when adding it to the tin, then it will come out nicely.

4 - You can bake the cake 1 day ahead of time or on the day, just give the cake enough time to cool completely. 

5 - When I want the cake to cool quickly, I wrap it in a tea towel and place it in the freezer. This hastens the cooling but still protects the cake and other things in the freezer too.

6 - When I make the cake more than 1 day beforehand I like to brush the cake with some simple syrup. This just keeps the cake super moist. 

7 - Don't have syrup and want to add another flavour? Try spread with raspberry jam after adding the buttercream between layers.  

8 - Be very sparing with the pink colouring. A little goes a long way!

9 - When frosting with buttercream, we first make a crumb coat which is a thinner coat to catch the crumbs. Then refrigerate it til the buttercream firms up hard and then add the proper final coat of buttercream. Frosting the cake is made much easier with a cake turntable and scraper.

10 - American buttercream does crust over and firm up so make sure to cover the buttercream in the mixing bowl while you are working with it. 

11 - To add the decoration, we use an extra large basket weave tip 789 and a small basket weave tip 47.

12 - To cut the cake you can either slice it into very thin and tall slices or slice each layer of the 4 layers of cake into 6 wedges as each layer will have icing on it.

Other birthday cakes that I've made for people are this Raspberry birthday cake for Sammie that happens to be vegan and this spring roll cake for Monica who doesn't like sweets. The Elliotts also love this healthy, vegan birthday cake.

Marble Cake Recipe

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An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Marble Cake Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 90 minutes plus cooling time

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Serves: 24 people

Ingredients Needed

For Cake

  • 6 large eggs, room temperature
  • 310g/10.9ozs caster or superfine sugar
  • 300g/10.6ozs cake flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 100g/3.5ozs butter, melted
  • 60ml/2flozs boiling water from a kettle
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract or paste
  • 2 drops pink food colouring
  • Strawberry or raspberry flavouring
  • 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoons boiling water

For American Buttercream Frosting

  • 1100g/2.4lbs pure icing or powdered sugar
  • 310g/10.9ozs butter, room temperature
  • 4 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
  • 4-5 tablespoons milk
  • Pink food colouring
  • Strawberry or raspberry flavouring
  • 6 maraschino cherries
  • 1/4 cup simple syrup (optional)

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 PREPARE - Preheat oven to 170C/340F fan forced or 190/374F conventional and line 2x 16cm/6.3inch diameter and 8cm/3.1inch high round cake tins on the base and sides.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 2 WHISK - Whisk eggs in a mixer bowl on high speed for 5 minutes until pale and fluffy. On low speed add sugar in a stream and increase speed to high and whisk for 4-5 minutes until the mixture is thick and pale.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 3 FOLD - Sift the cake flour and baking powder together and then fold into the egg mixture. Add the melted butter, hot water and vanilla and fold well. Make sure that the butter is fully enveloped, check under the batter near the base of the bowl where it sometimes hides. Try not to over stir.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 4 TINT - Divide the mixture into three. Add strawberry colouring nad flavouring to one and stir until just combined. To a second bowl sift in the cocoa powder and add the boiling water and stir until just combined.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 5 LAYER - Spoon one spoon of each on the base of the prepared tin and alternate. take a knife and swirl the mixture in an S pattern once.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 6 BAKE - Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes or until the centre springs back when pressed or a skewer inserted comes out clean. See note below if your cake tin is a different size.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 7a BUTTERCREAM CONVENTIONAL - Sift the icing sugar. Beat the icing sugar, butter, vanilla and 3 tablespoons of milk with electric beaters on low speed for a minute. If the buttercream is looking stiff add the remaining milk tablespoon by tablespoon. Beat for 3-4 minutes on high speed until pale and fluffy.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 7a BUTTERCREAM THERMOMIX - Place icing sugar in a clean and fry Thermomix bowl and set to 30 seconds speed #6. Add butter and set to 5 minutes, reverse speed #4. After 15 seconds add 3 tablespoons of milk and vanilla and it should come together to become a buttercream texture. After 2 minutes add colour and flavouring.

Marble Cake Recipe

Step 8 CRUMB COAT- Trim the cake so that the cake is completely flat on the top and cut each cake in half horizontally. Place a dab of buttercream on a cake board to secure the cake and place one cake half on this. Brush with simple syrup to keep the cake moist (not needed if you bake the cake on the same day or the day before). Spread with buttercream and repeat until you have 4 layers sandwiched with buttercream. Spread a thin layer of buttercream around the outside and use a scraper to smooth it out. refrigerate for 20-30 minutes until the buttercream is firm.

Marble Cake Recipe
Crumb coat-don't worry it's messy!

Step 8 COVER - Fill a piping bag with some buttercream reserving around 1 cup and fitted with an extra large 789 piping tip and pipe buttercream around the cake. Use the dough scraper to smooth it out - the best way is to have the scraper in your dominant hand and turn the turntable with your other hand. Pipe any gaps and keep scraping.

Marble Cake Recipe
Proper coat

Step 9 DECORATE- Tint the remaining buttercream with red and mix. Fill the piping bag and tilt the cake carefully and pipe a waterfall pattern on the side. I also filled a small piping bag fitted with the 47 small basket tip and piped some pink dabs. Add the maraschino cherries on top. This can be stored, covered at room temperature.

Marble Cake Recipe

Marble Cake Recipe

Substitution notes:

This recipe makes 2 x 6 inch cakes that can be split in half to create a 4 layer cake. This recipe can easily be halved to make a single cake instead of a layered cake. You also don't need to spread frosting in between the layers but I love frosting so I never miss a chance to add it.

I baked 6 inch cakes which are smaller than a typical 8 inch or 20cm cake because I wanted the cake to have a taller look. However you can easily make this into an 20cm/8inch cake, just bake it for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Personal Note

Marble Cake Recipe

We were celebrating Laura's birthday with her and her boyfriend Lima Lima Delta (he's in the Navy). Lima Lima Delta is navy code for a little lie down ie when someone needs to go for a nap. LLD is great to cook for because he's a real food enthusiast that is discovering a lot of food for the first time now that he is in a relationship with Laura and she is opening up his palate to delicious food. He will try everything and give his honest opinion about it and it's great to have someone expressive about food because Mr NQN is the opposite and if he loves something he'll just describe it as "it's ok".

Last time I gave her some cake, it was the chocolate zucchini cake, one of my favourite ever chocolate cakes as it is rich, fudgey and moist. She messaged me one night saying that she overheard him cutting in the kitchen himself a slice of the cake and telling the cake, "I love you" quietly. It was very funny and honestly I feel the same way when eating cake too!

Sheryl also stopped by Laura's house and tried the cake and I'm was happy to see that it got her tick of approval too. She said that it reminded her of the marble cake she had when growing up and that the CWA would be proud.

So tell me Dear Reader, are you expressive about food? Do you like marble cake?

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Marble Cake Recipe Neapolitan was written by and published on in Delicious Recipes, Cake Recipes and Cake Decorating.

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