Ok, here’s the story:

So Delicious and Go Dairy Free are having a recipe contest (March Recipe Madness Contest top prize is a $500 Whole Foods gift card): Make something with one or more of their products in it, and the challenge, which is a real kicker, it must have 8 ingredients or fewer.  Normally, I wouldn’t care to try to incorporate a sponsor’s ingredients into a recipe just to enter a contest, but this one, heck, I already bake with many of their items anyways, so the contest seemed tailored just for me :).

In the next paragraph, I’ll be whining about what a trying thing it is to make a dessert with 8 ingredients or less, but deep inside, seriously, I love(d) the idea of the challenge.  It had the little wheels in my head churning the moment I saw the contest: I went  through all my recipe books searching for ideas, should I make a cake, or a cookie, or a pie.  Oh what to do?!?  I finally decided on my pound cake recipe because it has just 6 ingredients in it, if you don’t count the vanilla extract, and so that gave me just enough wiggle room to jazz up the basic cake and make it, hopefully, contest worthy.  (I did, in the end, put the vanilla back in – didn’t seem right without it.)

Have you ever tried to make a cake with only 8 ingredients?  Not easy I discovered.  Not that I thought it was going to be easy, but I didn’t realize it would have me contemplating for 10 full minutes whether to add vanilla extract or coconut extract, or whether to just nix both extracts and throw in a cup of chocolate chips, or toasted coconut, or pecans.  Normally, I would just add it all and see what happens, but there was no space in the ingredient list for any extra flourishes, not a dusting of powdered sugar nor a dash of cinnamon.  I had so many amazing ideas for the most flavorful cakes in the world (ok, might be exaggerating a wee bit), but all of them were way over the ingredient threshold.  It was hard.  I had to make some tough culinary taste choices, but I think and hope you will be as happy as I am with the results.  And, a big plus, all those other cakes I came up with that had more than 8 ingredients, I wrote them down and I am excited to go back in the kitchen and put those ideas to test.  Stay tuned…  🙂

Chocolate Marble Pound Cake (serves 10)

• 1/2 cup vegan butter
• 1 1/2 cups cane sugar
• 3/4 cup So Delicious Coconut yogurt, plain
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons  baking powder
• 2/3 cup So Delicious Almond Milk, Plain
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted

1. Preheat oven to 350F.  Lightly grease a 5×9 loaf pan.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the flour and baking powder and set aside
3. In a separate bowl, mix together the almond milk and vanilla and set aside
4. In a large bowl, cream together the butter substitute and sugar until light and creamy.
5. Add the yogurt and mix until all combined.
6. Add the flour mixture in two additions, alternating with the milk, mixing after each addition until ingredients are just combined.
7. Take 1/2 cup of the batter out of the bowl, and mix the cocoa powder into it, to make a small amount of chocolate batter.
8. Pour the vanilla batter into the prepared pan.
9. Scoop the chocolate batter on top of the vanilla, and using a chopstick or knife, marble the chocolate into the vanilla.
10. Bake for 50-60 minutes (a toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean)
11. Cake can be stored for 2-3 days covered at room temperature, or 5-6 days covered in the refrigerator.

Adding the yogurt to the creamed sugar/butter

Adding the first addition of milk.

Marbling!  I apparently am not a good marbler, seeing as how my cake just had a kind of center of chocolate.  Really get in there and swirl it around for best results!

mmmmmmmm…..