Ritz Paris, François Perret · Since 2016
The marble cake
Perret’s marble cake is a dense, buttery loaf of vanilla and chocolate batter swirled by hand and glazed in dark chocolate: the most homely piece on the palace counter and the one Parisians carry home from Le Comptoir.
Taste profile
Pair it with
A cup of coffee, or a glass of milk if nobody is looking.
The marble cake is French childhood in a loaf, and Perret put it on the Ritz tea menu without irony. His version is richer than the supermarket memory: a pound-cake batter with vanilla and one with dark cocoa, swirled with a knife, baked slowly and dipped in a thin chocolate glaze so the slice has a shell. It is sold whole and by the slice at Le Comptoir and served in the Salon Proust with cream.
The cake is the counterpart of the madeleine: two plain things done perfectly, which is the whole argument of the Perret kitchen.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- 250 g butter, soft
- 250 g sugar
- 4 eggs
- 250 g flour
- 8 g baking powder
- 1 vanilla pod
- 30 g cocoa powder
- 150 g dark chocolate for the glaze
Method
- Beat butter and sugar until pale, add eggs one by one, then flour and baking powder.
- Divide in two: vanilla seeds in one half, cocoa in the other.
- Spoon alternately into a buttered loaf tin, run a knife through twice for the marble.
- Bake at 160 °C for about 55 minutes; cool completely.
- Melt the chocolate with a spoon of oil, pour over the cold cake for a thin glaze and let it set.
Where to taste it
