Life is all about choices. Blogging is no different. Sweet or Savory. Healthy or indulgent. Hot or cold. Moody pictures or bright images. To post or not to post. And so on. Choices can be confusing. Also overwhelming. A Neopolitan cake at least saves you some choices.

My twin boys have very different personalities and palates. They make different choices when it comes to food and I think they secretly enjoy that. When it comes to cake, one of them wants a strawberry cake while the other one loves chocolate. Thankfully, I have a solution to that now. This cake has 3 flavours- strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, present individually but mixed together in a marbled effect. It starts with a single batter that is later divided into 3 different bowls and flavoured with the respective ingredients.

It is actually fun to make this cake, especially with kids. When I saw condensed milk in the recipe I was a bit concerned if the cake would be too sweet. On the contrary it wasn’t like that at all. The texture was dense almost like a mud cake. I found the chocolate part of the batter too subtle for my liking and I might increase the amount of cocoa next time. On it’s own, the cake tasted alright. I thought it might benefit from a little bit of frosting, ganache or even whipped cream. So I piped whipped cream which lifted the appearance as well.

Neopolitan Marble Cake (adapted with variation from Nestle recipes)
Serves 12

250 g butter, room temperature
395 g can sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
21/4 cup plain flour, sifted
1 tbsp. baking powder
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
Pink food colouring
1 tsp strawberry essence
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tbsp. milk, extra
1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped to stiff peaks and sweetened to your taste
maraschino cherries, to decorate
sprinkles, to decorate

Preheat oven to 150 degrees C. Grease and line the base a 19 cm round pan with baking paper.
Beat butter and condensed milk until thick and creamy. Add eggs, beating well. Fold in sifted flour, baking powder alternately with milk.

Divide mixture among 3 bowls. Add vanilla essence to the first bowl, mix, leave aside. Using pink food colouring, tint the second bowl pink and add the strawberry essence. Mix. To the last bowl, add the cocoa powder and milk and mix.

Drop alternate spoonfuls of mixture into pan. Swirl mixture with a skewer to create a marbled effect. Bake for 11/4 hours or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool.

Once completely cooled down, pipe swirls of whipped cream onto the top of the cake. Decorate with cherries and sprinkles.