Name: Too Many Eggs Marble Cake Recipe
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h 35 min
Total time: 1 h 55 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 3 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips; 3 cups all purpose flour; 1 ½ tsp baking powder; ½ tsp kosher salt; 2 cups unsalted butter, room temp; 3 cups white sugar; 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract; 10 large eggs at room temperature (11 eggs if you are using eggs from your flock and some are very small); 2 tablespoons cocoa powder; Confectioners sugar for dusting; Whipped cream for serving, optional

Jump to Recipe

This moist marble cake has a tender crumb and uses almost a dozen eggs. It’s an excellent (eggscellent?) way to use up extra eggs, especially if you have chickens.

A slice of marble cake on a plate with whipped cream.

Table of Contents

What You’ll Need
How to Make this Marble Pound Cake
Tips for Success
How to Store Marble Cake
Can I Freeze Extra Cake?
Get the Recipe

There are two kinds of people when it comes to this marble cake.

There are regular folks who will look at the number of eggs required and think: Good lord, that is an insane number of eggs.

Then there are the chicken keepers, who will look at the number of eggs in this recipe and think: Thank goodness. I get to use up some eggs!

This recipe is for all the chicken keepers out there who have more eggs than they know what to do with! It uses 10-11 eggs, depending on what size your hens lay, and can clear up a nice amount of counter space in one go.

A couple of days of worth of eggs. You can see they are different sizes, hence the slight variation in number of eggs needed.

Featured Comment

Excellent! -- and while I do a lot of cake baking, had never done a marble cake. Turned out beautifully. And, yes, I've got chickens, and right now I'm drowning in eggs. What a wonderful way to use them. Will be baking and freezing this cake often and visiting this site again. Many thanks!

– Reynolds

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What You’ll Need

There aren’t any complicated ingredients in this marble cake, just a whole lotta eggs, butter and sugar, plus some flour and cocoa powder to hold it all together!

Dry ingredients: Flour, baking powder, kosher salt and cocoa powder.
Wet ingredients: butter, sugar & vanilla extract.
- This recipe uses 2 cups (4 sticks) of butter, which equals 1lb of butter like in a traditional “pound” cake. Yes, that makes this cake calorie dense but I’ll be honest with you, counting calories is not my thing. I’d rather make a good cake, have a small slice, then freeze the rest for later! If you don’t want to use a pound of butter then this is not the recipe for you.
Eggs! You will need to use your best judgement here. If we are using regular “large sized” supermarket eggs as a starting point, this recipe would use 10 “large” eggs.
- My hens lay anywhere from small to extra large eggs, as you can see in the photo above. So depending on who has been laying, I may use 11 eggs if most of them are on the smaller side.
Chocolate: Semi sweet chocolate chips and cocoa powder
Confectioners sugar for dusting
Whipped cream for serving, optional

How to Make this Marble Pound Cake

Ok so let’s get to it. The ingredients for this recipe are fairly long because I wanted to share as much detail as possible. Despite the length though, this cake is easy to make.

Prep your tools: Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a large bundt pan with PAM or other cooking spray, then dust with flour. Tap the bottom of the pan and rotate at various angles to move the flour around the insides of the pan.

Chocolate chips ready to be melted in a glass bowl double boiler

Melted chocolate a glass bowl double boiler

Melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler. Fill a small pot half way with water. Place a heat proof bowl (pyrex or metal works nicely) on top of the pot, making sure just the bottom of the bowl fits into the top of the pot.

Turn heat to low and add chocolate chips to the heatproof bowl. Melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally and being very careful not to let any water get into the bowl. (This will make your chocolate “seize” and then it wont be usable.) When the chocolate has melted set aside. Be sure to use oven mits to protect your fingers from the hot edges of the bowl.

Combine dry ingredients: In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Butter and sugar creamed in a mixer bowl

Eggs added to creamed butter and sugar in a mixer bowl.

Cream butter and sugar: In the bowl of a stand mixer, or a large bowl with a hand held mixer, cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. This will take 2-3 minutes at medium-high speed.

Mix in the eggs. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing between each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Vanilla cake batter in a stand mixer bowl

Begin adding dry ingredients. Add half of the flour mixture and mix well on low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the remaining flour mixture and mix on low until well combined, pausing to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Spoon half of this batter into your prepared baking tin.

Add chocolate. To the remaining batter in your mixing bowl, add the melted chocolate and the cocoa powder. Mix well with your spatula or mixing spoon, scraping the bottom of the bowl to make sure all the batter gets worked in.

Chocolate and vanilla batter in a bundt pan.

Combine batters. Add the chocolate batter on top of the the vanilla batter in your baking mold. With a small spatula, swirl the two batters together. Make sure the utensil you are using to swirl the batter reaches to the bottom of the batter. Be careful not to swirl so much that you end up mixing the two batters together completely. I will usually go around the baking mold once clockwise, swirling as I go, then go around once in the other direction.

Bake for 50 minutes uncovered. Then cover with aluminum foil and bake for another 15-25 minutes, testing after 10 minutes. The cake is done when a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool. Let the cake stand for 20 minutes on a cooling rack before trying to remove it from the mold.

Dusting confectioners sugar on a marble cake.

Remove cake from pan. When you are ready to un-mold the cake, place a plate or cutting board on top of the opening on the mold, then flip it over so the cake falls onto the plate. This can take a few minutes. If after a few minutes your cake has not fallen out you can gently tap along the outside of the mold to help encourage the cake to release.

Serve. To serve top with confectioners sugar. Add a dollop of whipped cream if desired.

A marble cake with a slice taken out and the swirl visible.

Tips for Success

Don’t skip greasing and flouring your bundt pan. It is tempting to overlook this step, particularly the dusting bit if you’ve greased the pan. But trust me, you need BOTH the cooking spray and a good dusting of flour to prevent this cake from sticking in the pan.
Give it time. This marble cake takes a good long while to bake. It also takes at least an hour or two to cool. Don’t rush it.
If your cake breaks. If your cake sticks to the pan, most likely it is because the pan wasn’t meticulously prepped or the cake was de-panned before it was cool enough. Still no biggie.
- If only a few part of the cake are broken, just cut out those slices and use them for a taste test. Serve the remaining slices to your loved ones and they’ll never know the difference.
- Another thing you can do with broken cake slices is layer them in a mason jar along with whipped cream, ice cream and mashed fruit (like strawberries). Tell people this fancy trifle was intentional. They’ll be impressed by how good the dessert tastes and how clever you were to use a marble cake instead of a regular old vanilla cake. My lemon bundt cake recipe is REALLY good for this. Sometimes I make that cake just to make a trifle.

A slice of marble cake topped with a dollop of whipped cream and served with coffee.

How to Store Marble Cake

I usually store this cake on the counter. The entire cake is placed on a glass plate, then covered with saran wrap. We cut off slices as we go, which helps preserve the cake’s moisture a bit longer. This marble cake will keep for about 4 days this way.

Make sure your cake has cooled completely before you cover it or moisture will build up and make the confectioners sugar on top a bit soggy.

Can I Freeze Extra Cake?

You can store individual slices of marble cake in the freezer. First, let your cake come to room temperature. Then cut off slices and wrap each slice in several layers of plastic wrap. Store these in a freezer safe air tight container. The cake will keep this way for up to 3 months.

I prefer to freeze this cake without the confectioners sugar on top. This way you don’t have to fuss with any moisture build up and can enjoy your slice of cake with a fresh dusting of powdered sugar when ready.

When you are ready to eat a slice of frozen marble cake, just let it thaw on the counter top for a few hours. If you are in a rush and need a cake fix stat, you can warm it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Or, you could always make my vanilla mug cake. 🙂

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