Chocolate chip and marzipan loaf cake

Marzipan in a slice of cake. How lush can a slice of cake taste? We've all had slices of wedding cakes covered with marzipan and fondant. Then there's simnel cake, a fruit cake baked with a layer of marzipan in the middle and another one on top of the batter.

But this is a butter cake, the batter studded with chocolate chips and a layer of marzipan in the middle.

Susannah Blake's book "500 Cakes" has a recipe for such a cake. She gives an option of using candied cherries or chocolate chips. I preferred the latter. The marzipan was left over from a wedding cake I had done recently.

Quite an easy recipe- a creamed batter with chocolate chips mixed in. The recipe asks for the marzipan to be grated but mine was quite crumbly thanks to the time it had spent in the freezer.

The marzipan itself was a pretty simple thing to do- home ground almond powder, granulated sugar, icing sugar, a little egg white and some lime juice and brandy kneaded into a paste.

I played around with the measurement of the ingredients and when the loaf finally came out of the oven, it looked like any other loaf cake. What did I expect? But when it was sliced, aah, that was a different story.

Even though I had weighed out my batter, put exactly half in the pan, sprinkled the crumbled marzipan over evenly and then topped with the remaining batter, this is what it looked like after baking:

I had a look at the baked cake in the book and found the same wavy line of marzipan. So, then on to tasting.

Warm, buttery, a little dense and the lush taste of almond marzipan. Globules of chocolate chips yielding to the bite. Flavour overload.

Chocolate chip and marzipan loaf cake

Ingredients
150 gm flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
180 gm butter
150 gm sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
40 gm almond powder
125 gm marzipan
110 gm dark chocolate chips

Method
Grease and base line an 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" loaf pan.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt, keep aside.
In a mixing bowl, place butter and sugar and beat on low speed till well combined.
Beat in eggs, one at a time till mixture is creamy.
Mix in almond powder, blend it in then fold in flour in three lots.
Stir through the chocolate chips.
Scoop half the batter into the tin, crumble the marzipan in an even layer over the surface then top with the remaining batter.
Bake in a  preheated 170°C oven for about 40 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 160°C for another 15 minutes.
Test the cake with a skewer and when done, remove from the oven.
Allow to cool for about 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.