Marble Cake Recipe & Classic Star Wars Cake

 This post first appeared on my other blog in 2015, but since I no longer maintain that one, I'm reposting some of my favorites here!

THE NEW STAR WARS MOVIE COMES OUT TONIGHT!!!!!

I’m not planning to attend the premier (no baby sitter + I hate lines + midnight is late) but I’m definitely planning to see the movie sometime soon!

In the meantime, here’s a Star Wars cake!  This is a marble cake (recipe below) covered in Chocolate MM Fondant.  I used white food coloring mixed with vodka to paint a star burst.  It took 4-5 layers using 3 different paint brushes (starting with a large brush, ending with a small one) to achieve the final look I was going for.

Then, I found a still shot of the epic Luke Skywalker vs Darth Vader lightsaber battle from The Empire Strikes Back and printed it out.  From there, I used it as a stencil to cut Luke & Vader out of more chocolate MM fondant.  Lastly, I made a colored light saber for each and added a glow around them.  And of course the epic Star Wars quote!

Marble Cake

1 (15 oz) box white cake mix

1 (3.9 oz) vanilla instant pudding

4 egg whites

8 oz sour cream
¾ cup canola oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup water

1 tbsp special dark cocoa powder

2-4 tbsp Hershey’s syrup

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and spray two 8-inch pans with nonstick spray or line muffin tins with paper liners.

Mix the cake mix, pudding, egg whites, sour cream, oil, vanilla, and water in the bowl of a stand mixer until smooth. 

Pour about 1/3 of the batter into a separate bowl (this doesn’t have to be exact).  Stir in the cocoa powder and Hershey syrup (I didn’t actually measure the syrup, I have it a good squirt and stirred/mixed/adjusted until I was happy with the dark chocolatey color).

Alternate adding vanilla and chocolate batter to each of the prepared pans.  Swirl with a knife to marble (to make cupcakes instead, carefully return the chocolate batter to the mixing bowl, keeping it to one half of the bowl. Marble once with a knife.  Use a 3 tablespoon scoop to carefully scoop the batter into the prepared muffin tins, taking care to scoop a bit of chocolate & vanilla in each scoop).

Bake in the preheated oven for 28-32 minutes (22-25 for cupcakes) or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool in pans for 10 minutes, then invert and cool completely before frosting.