HCB - Marble Velvet Cake

For this week's HCB Free Choice week, I decided to bake the Marble Velvet Cake. Instead of baking the full recipe in a 10-cup Bundt pan, I decided to use one of my small loaf pans. It measured 2 cups so I made 1/5 of the recipe. Easy! Jenn is the queen of small(er) dessert portions, so I decided I'd give it a try too :o)

This is a sour cream based butter cake where melted dark chocolate is added to 1/3 of the batter. It came together so quickly and easy that I didn't even take pictures of the batter. Since my loaf pan is dark-colored, I reduced the oven temperature by 25 degrees (I used the convection setting which means I lowered the temperature by another 25 degrees bringing it down to 300). The cake baked for about 35 minutes.

Look at that crumb!

Final thoughts/tips:

• Rose has every right to call this a "velvet cake". The texture is phenomenal. Soft and velvety smooth. It just melts in your mouth. The chocolate sections are intensely chocolaty which is a nice contrast against the buttery non-chocolate part.
• As always, I substituted 10% of the butter with canola oil for extra moisture.
• The cake might be a little bit on the crumbly side, but then again, I cut very thin slices to justify eating more than one slice :o) I'll make a note for myself in the book to try bleached AP flour next time instead of cake flour.
• Hubby has been busy all day working on his home improvement project so he hasn't tried it yet. When he does (assuming there's any left!), I'll update this post with his rating.