Marble cake with chocolate frosting from Sift: The Elements of Great Baking (page 144) by Nicola Lamb

Where’s the full recipe - why can I only see the ingredients?

Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

  • Eat Your Books

    Errata: Ingredients list should be 130g sour cream, 30g milk. Method: Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder, then stir these into the butter/sugar. Finally, stir through the sour cream. Divide the batter in half, about 360g each, then stir the cocoa powder AND MILK into one half.

  • d.giginyc on April 06, 2026

    This was the first recipe I’ve tried from this book that’s been off. The consistency of this batter was a bit strange. It was super thick. Thicker than pancake batter. Nicola wanted the batter to be split in half so that the cocoa powder and milk could be added into half the batter but the entirety of my batter was a little over the weight for what she wanted half of it to be so I was very confused. Due to that, I just made the cake one dimensional and added a bit of vanilla extract. The chocolate ganache came together pretty nicely. I used semi-sweet chocolate because I didn’t have dark chocolate. Next time, I’ll make it with dark chocolate. Maybe 2/3 dark chocolate and 1/3 semi-sweet because there was/is a depth missing from it. I think it came out good in spite of all the errors and it this was a good learning experience for me because I was able to tell where things were going wrong and pivot. Some of my ingredients were cold (sour cream, egg) and I set the temp to 350 degrees instead of 375. Increased it at the 25 minute mark because I took it out and noticed it wasn’t baked in the middle and then added 7 mins and it was good to go. Will try this recipe again.

  • TheWayEyeRoll on February 03, 2026

    This is the first recipe I tried from this book and it was an inauspicious start. The chocolate part felt chalky. The frosting was unsatisfying. I kept going back to the recipe to see if I’d missed an ingredient. I looked at the errata to see if something had been changed (no, the US version seems to have the corrections.) To me too many parts of this cake seem off. My partner said it’s fine. But for all the effort I would like more than just fine.

  • Tessvssr on January 17, 2026

    I was very worried while making this because the batter seemed such a weird consistency. Turned out beautiful though! Will make again. The icing definitely needs the salt.

You must Create an Account or Sign In to add a note to this book.

Reviews about this recipe

This recipe does not currently have any reviews.

You are reporting a broken online recipe link to EYB. Please confirm that you want the report submitted. Please also suggest the correct URL for this online recipe to the below textbox.