Gluten Free Chocolate Marble Cake

This weekend, Cody wanted me to make a cake for some reason...don't ask me, usually I'm the one wanting to make a cake.

We found a box cake mix at wholefoods by Cherrybrook Kitchen that is gluten and wheat free! We've made one of these before and it was pretty good.

Cody also thought it would be good to put chocolate chips in it, so we bought a bag to throw in. And we also bought some powdered sugar so that I could make some icing because I refuse to eat cake without icing.

So when we got home, I decided to try something that I've never tried before - a marble cake! I decided to melt the chocolate chips and then add half of the mix to the chocolate and then marble the cake in the pan. 

In case you don't know how to do this it's really easy:

Step 1: Make the yellow cake mix. (It just calls for water and butter + the mix)

Step 2: Melt 1/2 to 3/4 of the bag of chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl. (I heated the bowl 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between)

Step 3: Pour about half of the cake mix into the chocolate and stir it up.

Step 4: Grease a baking pan and then start pouring the mix into it, starting with the chocolate, pour a big drop in the middle of the pan. Then switch to a big drop of the yellow mix, and then alternate until you've put the whole mix into the pan.

Step 5: Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes, or until you can put a tooth-pick into the cake and it comes out dry.

Here's what mine looked like when I took it out of the oven.

Step 6: After the cake has cooled for about 15 minutes, flip it over onto your plate or whatever you will use to frost it on and let it continue to cool. In order for the frosting to stick, the cake needs to be cooled completely or else the frosting will melt. 

For this reason, I waited to start making the icing until the cake was out of the oven. I used a butter cream frosting recipe that is really simple to make. 

Ingredients - 

  - 2 sticks of butter

  - 4 cups powdered sugar

  - 1 tablespoon of milk (I think I used almond milk)

  - 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Step 1: Use a mixer to cream the butter.

Step 2: Once the butter is smooth, add 1 cup of powdered sugar, whisk with the mixer until smooth, and then add one more cup of powdered sugar. 

Step 3: Add milk and vanilla extract and mix.

Step 4: Add the other 2 cups of powdered sugar one at a time, mixing in between.

Step 5: Taste test!!! If needed add more sugar or milk...until you get it as creamy, or as sweet as you want it!

I always put it in the fridge for about 10 minutes to make sure it's nice and firm before you frost the cake. For this one, after I put the frosting on, I had a lot left over so I decided to have some fun and decorate the top. I added 2 drops of blue food coloring to the remaining frosting and then piped on some flowers. I sort of ran out of icing...but that's ok. I was just playing around with it.

YUM!