Marble Castella Recipe

Introduction

This is one of my go to dessert recipes for larger events as it produces a lovely soft, moist, melt-in-your-mouth cake to impress your guests! Unlike many western style cakes, this cake uses a meringue technique to make a light and fluffy cake that will be gobbled down in no time flat!

This recipe is heavily based on the following amazing Cooking Tree Videos (would recommend them! Great recipes!)

• 23cm 대왕! 카스테라 (대만 카스테라) 만들기 : Taiwanese Castella Cake Recipe | Cooking tree
• 초콜릿 코튼 스폰지 케이크 만들기, 초코 대만 카스테라:Chocolate Cotton Sponge Cake(Taiwanese Castella) Recipe |Cooking tree

This recipe has some difficulty in terms of the methods, meringue and cooking time, so would recommend trying one of the cooking tree recipes first to see if you can get the hang of it!

This recipe works as both a vanilla/chocolate and pandan/chocolate marble cake! The pictures in this show a mixture of the two.

Recipe

The following recipe is for a 23cm Square pan.

Equipment needed

• 2 glass bowls
• 2 whisks or non-stick spatulas
• Stand Mixer or Hand held mixer

Time: 30 minute prep, 1h 30 minute Cook time.

Ingredients

Vanilla/Pandan Batter

• 62.5g Unsalted Butter
• 75g Milk (Pandan Leaves infused Milk for Pandan Flavour)
• 4.5 Egg Yolk
• 5g Vanilla Extract
• 1g Salt
• 72.5g Cake Flour (65g Plain Flour, 7.5g Corn Flour)

Chocolate Batter

• 37.5g Chocolate (Dark works best)
• 60g Unsalted Butter
• 75g Milk
• 67.5g Cake flour (60g Plain Flour, 7.5g Corn Flour)
• 7.5g Cocoa Powder
• 4.5 Egg Yolks
• 5g Vanilla Extract
• 1g Salt

Meringue

• 9 Egg Whites
• 140g Fine Caster Sugar

Note: Ignore the green matcha powder in the picture everything else is the same ;) matcha doesn’t work very well.

Separating Eggs

Take the 9 eggs and separate into yolks and whites. There must not be any yolk in the whites or the meringue will fail. Suggestion is to have a third bowl which you break your eggs over, and then to pour the egg whites into a larger bowl. If a break occurs, you don’t loose your whole bowl of egg whites!

Usually I will use the two shell, pass back and forth technique, but do whatever works for you!

Egg whites can be left in the fridge, but ideally kept at room temperature (around 20c).

Prepping Batters

1. Prepare two glass mixing bowls. One will be for one batter, and the other for the other batter.
2. In the vanilla bowl, put in the butter and milk, in the chocolate bowl, put in the chocolate, butter and milk
3. Boil the kettle, and fill two saucepans (that will fit the bowls) with the hot water. Place the filled mixing bowls on top of each of the saucepans. Slowly melt and incorporate it.

4. While they are melting, measure out the cake flour, and the cake flour+cocoa powder. Make sure they are both sifted. Would recommend to measure into a fine mesh sieve. Note also you probably want to have separate whisks for each mixture to avoid the vanilla getting all chocolatey!

5. Once the batters have been melted and incorporated, take them off the heat and put onto a heatproof matt or teatowel. They should be around 50 degrees. If above, let them cool until around 50 degrees or less.

6. Vanilla Batter Incorporate 4.5 egg yolks one by one into the mixture, whisking them in. Once incoporated, sift in the flour and whisk it in too. Only mix until homogenous, don’t overmix!
7. Chocolate Batter [NOTE THIS IS THE OTHER WAY ROUND] First make sure that the mixture is no higher than 52 degrees! Then sift and whisk in the flour and chocolate in batches. Then incorporate the remaining 4.5 egg yolks into the mixture until it becomes homogenous. If you lift up the whisk, it should form thick ribbons.

8. Add vanilla into both the vanilla and chocolate mixtures. (If you want pandan, you can add some gree food colouring at this point too.)

9. Ideally cover the batters and set to the side, you can keep them on the saucepans (heat off) to keep them warm.

Whipping Meringue

1. Thoroughly clean and dry a glass/steel mixing bowl or the stand mixer bowl.
2. Pour your egg whites into the bowl.

3. Starting at a medium low speed whisk the egg whites until foamy, then add a third of the sugar. (On my mixer thats speed 5/10)

4. Continue to whisk at a medium speed until the egg whites start to show waves, add another third of the sugar.

5. Continue to whisk at a medium-high speed until the egg whites definitely show waves (about another minute) and add the rest of the sugar.

6. Continue to whisk, checking the whites every 30 seconds - 1minute until we get medium-stuff peaks. (Look up photos for what stiff peaks looks like - sorry got too busy and forgot to take photo!)

This is the hardest part ;) good luck!

Some help - Whipping Egg Whites To Perfect Peaks

Combining

Turn on the oven to 150c, boil some water.

1. To each batter we want to add and incorporate the meringue three times!
2. Take the meringue and add around 70-80g to each batter and gently incorporate by folding in the meringue into the batter until no streaks and lumps remain.

3. Add another 70-80g to each batter and repeat folding in the meringue

4. Split the final amount of meringue between the batters and fold them in.

5. Cover the pan with baking paper
6. Pour both batters into the pan at the same time while rotating the pan to create a fun pattern internally to the cake. Use a chopstick to gently mix and create patterns in the cake.
7. Tap the pan on a surface to get rid of some bubbles.

Baking

1. Make sure the oven is at 150c ish.
2. The baking requires a water bath! Grab a tray which is bigger than the cake pan (e.g. roasting tray, or the bottom tray of the oven). Fill the tray with hot water from the kettle.
3. Put the cake pan into the oven above the water bath (or worst case cover the cake pan in some foil and place it in the water bath)

4. Bake for 40minutes at 150c
5. Turn down the oven and Bake for 30 minutes at 130c
6. Turn off the oven and open the door a bit, waiting 10 minutes to cool down
7. Take the cake out and let cool! Then Cut into it! Serve dusted with sugar, ice cream and/or fresh fruits!

8. Make sure you’ve let it cool on a wire rack! Eat within 3 days and store in a covered box!

Notes

1. This recipe is hard I failed so many times xD Great when it works though - resilience and patience through baking!
2. Things that can fail include

• Batter too hot when adding flour or egg, flour gelatenises, or egg cooks
• For some absurd reason the order of adding flour and egg matters
• Oh my god the meringue is a pain… must be a clean bowl, eggs at room temperature, don’t overbeat or it will fail (grainy and a mass), don’t underbeat (soft peaks) or it will fail
• Don’t over-incoporate the meringue into the batter - use a spatula and fold, don’t use a whisk you will beat out all the air!
• Temp of oven too high (lots of cracks, air escaping), Type of oven (fan oven vs convection oven), oven hot spots!

Soo… Good luck!