Classic Marble Pound Cake Recipe from Grandma

Grandma’s Marble Pound Cake – a family recipe: dense, rich, and flavored with lemon zest, rum and chocolate.

My old-fashioned Grandma’s Marble Pound Cake has been in our family for generations. It yields a dense, rich loaf with bright lemon zest, a touch of rum, and ribbons of bittersweet chocolate.

Some years my mother baked it in a bundt pan to make a Marble Bundt Cake. It’s perfect for holidays like Christmas and Easter, but she often made it on Sundays or any day she wanted a simple, comforting dessert.

Older recipes sometimes use imprecise measures such as “a tip of the knife” of baking soda. I watched my mother closely, and for this version I use 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder to keep the cake substantial rather than spongy. Traditional pound cakes rely mostly on the creaming of butter and sugar plus folded egg whites for lift; here I cream butter, sugar and yolks and then fold in the whites, with a small amount of baking powder to give a consistent, dense crumb.

This cake is not overly sweet; it was commonly served with a generous dusting of powdered sugar. If you prefer a sweeter cake, increase the sugar slightly to suit your taste.