Carrot Marble Cake

Marble cake is a classic childhood cooking memory that can touch your heart. Hearing the blender rattling in the kitchen I hurried up to help my mother, well, not really, because I just wanted to lick off the spatula covered with the sweet cream of eggs and sugar. Even now, when I am preparing this cake, I hardly resist that temptation…

Some legends are connected with the origin of the marble cake. The most known is the one about the three kings, who – on their way from Bethlehem – stopped in Alsace (eastern part of France, near the border with Germany). After the long journey from the Holy Land, the kings were very tired. As people welcomed them warmly the kings decided to bake a cake to show their gratitude. They put it on the turban of one of them and this is how the typical form of the cake was created! Frenchmen are firmly persuaded that their country is the cradle of this cake (but really: have you ever heard about a king who could bake??). They say that this story happened in the Alsatian village Ribeauvillé. Every year, on the second Sunday in June, they organize the feast of the marble cake which is called Fęte du Kougelhopf. No wonder that people in Alsatian towns and villages are eating this cake in the morning, at noon and also in the evening. Every bakery has its own recipe, traditionally it is baked in clay forms. They also sell cake forms of different sizes as souvenirs, there are even such magnets for your refrigerator! The name “Kougelhopf“ is very similar to the German word “Gugelhupf“ (read like google-hoopf!). Of course, “gugel” does not mean “google”, it was a medieval hood and “Hupf” comes from “Hefe” – yeast in German because originally it was prepared as a yeast cake.

The great expert on children‘s soul, Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, mentions this cake (which is called also Gugelhupf or Kouglof in Sweden) in her book Six Bullerby Children (my favorite children‘s book!). When the little girl Lisa is bored her mother advised her to bake a cake. Actually, there is the whole recipe in the book. Lisa baked the cake, she is very happy about it, and she shares it with all her friends.

Carrot Marble Cake

We need: 150 g grated carrots, 125 g sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tsp cinnamon, 80 g chopped pistachio seeds, 40 g flour, ½ tsp baking powder, 30 g breadcrumbs, a pinch of salt

Method: Mix carrots with sugar, eggs, cinnamon, salt and pistachio seeds. Sieve flour with baking powder, add to the carrot‘s mixture. Mix with breadcrumbs. Grease a form and sprinkle it with breadcrumbs, pour the dough. Heat oven to 180°C and bake for 35 minutes. After that leave the cake in the form for 10 minutes and then cool off.