Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Marble Cake

Hope you all had a wonderful and fruitful week. Especially with Hari Raya holiday, everyone gets to spend some quality time with family and perhaps a little quiet time too. How did you spend your holiday? Since its a school term break as well, I get to spend lots of time with my kids, literally 24-7, lol! Although we didn't do any holiday trip this time, we were already contented that we still get to spend more time with family here. :D But of course I still get to bake as often as I can when my kids are playing or doing things on their own. And I happened to bake this lovely Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Marble Cake that was very well received by my children. In fact I have already baked it twice and they are still asking for more!

Ingredients for Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Marble Cake: (makes a 12 cup bundt cake)
Chocolate Paste
3 tbsp cocoa powder (I used Valrohna, feel free to use any brand you prefer)
3 tbsp hot water

Cake Batter
1 cup (250g) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups (450g) caster sugar (I reduced it to 350g)
4 large eggs
2 & 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 & 1/2 cups (210g) sour cream
3 cups (420g) all purpose flour
2 & 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup miniature chocolate chips (I used 100g chocolate bar, chopped into small chunks)

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180C. The generously grease a 12 cup bundt pan.
  
• In a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder and the hot water together to make a smooth paste.
• In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Blend in the eggs and then vanilla. Then add in the sour cream, and scraping the bottom of the mixing bowl to make sure it is evenly combined.
• Fold in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and blend well. Lastly, mix in the chocolate chips or chopped chocolate chunks into the batter and mix well.
• Remove 1/3 of the batter and mix in the chocolate paste in to it.
• Spoon in big scoops of vanilla batter into the bundt pan and alternating with some spoons on chocolate batter as well to create the marble effect. Repeat till all the batter has been put in.
  
• Place in the oven to bake for 40 to 50 minutes, depending on your oven. Bake till golden brown and the tester comes out clean. If the top of the cake browns too quickly, cover with foil first until done.
• Once baked, remove from oven and let cool on rack for 15 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool completely. Enjoy!!
  

This tender-crumbled, lusciously flavored butter cake is such a delight! It actually slices like velvet, so yummy!

Furthermore its not hard to prepare. But the key is to use quality cocoa powder to make this. I used Valrohna cocoa powder and the deep, dark chocolate flavor really made this cake more luscious. :)

I love the chocolate chips in the cake, it's like biting into little "bonuses", nice! ;) I used 70% cocoa chocolate bar instead of the usual chocolate chips because I prefer the bittersweet dark flavor verses the sweeter version of the milk chocolate chips. :P

The 2nd time I made this cake, I used Madeline mould and also my Nordicware seashell pan which I got during one of my trips back to California . ;)Unfortunately due to the marble "effect" the seashells' shapes were not very obvious. However my kids loved it! They would pick their favorite shell shape and slowly savor it, lol!
Anyway, hope you will try this out and you will know what I mean. Definitely a delicious cake to share with your love ones. Okay, last but not least, Selamat Hari Raya to our fellow Muslims (hope I am not too late for that) and happy holidays to everyone!