Chocolate Squirrel Cake

When I was growing up my mother baked every Saturday, without fail, so that all week we had baked goods to nibble on. She always made fairy cakes (what cupcakes used to be called before they grew up and became sophisticated), apple tarts and then some other cake. One of my favourite of the cakes was her chocolate swirl cake and being children my brothers and I called it chocolate squirrel cake. So just to allay your fears about squirrels being hurt in the making of this cake, it's OK, no squirrels are involved. I decided I would make this for a friend at work whose birthday I missed. While checking out Rachel Allen's Bake I found what she called a "Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Cake". But she couldn't fool me with her posh name, this was chocolate squirrel cake! So decision made. I had most things in already but had to replenish my eggs and butter. I am still persevering with my stand mixer, I think that if I keep using it that it will all come good. I think one of the issues is getting the butter soft enough, then that will help with the mixing. I don't have a microwave so I put the oven on at about 50 degrees and put the butter in for about 10 minutes, which worked. I left it in the mixer for a good ten minutes to soften the butter before adding the sugar. But then when I added the eggs (one at a time) the mixture had that split look to it, you know when it looks like scrambled eggs? Not very encouraging. But I have found that if you push on when this happens it all seems to work out in the end. I took it off the mixer and continued by hand adding the dry ingredients and it came together OK. The mixture is just a Madeira mixture and once all the ingredients have been added you then divide it in two and add cocoa powder to one and you have your chocolate and vanilla mixtures. You then layer the chocolate and vanilla into the cake tin and, using a skewer (or in my case a chopstick, necessity being the mother of invention and all!) mix it together in a swirling movement to create the marbling (or in my mothers case the squirreling). The key is not to over mix, you want to make sure that you can see the swirls of chocolate and vanilla. I thought I did a good job but you never know until you cut it. Then it's into the oven and bake for 45 minutes, or if you have my old oven then probably 35 will do. It looked great when it came out, that lovely cracked top and you could see the swirls of chocolate too. I brought it in the next day and we consumed it in the afternoon, all to good comments. I took a photo when it was cut to see the marbling, I think I over mixed, but you can judge for yourselves. Although it was good I do think that my mother's tasted better, that may be just my memory playing tricks or maybe she really did put squirrels in and that's what made the difference!!
I'm off to France today so will be silent for the rest of the week but you will be regaled with all things French when I get back (remember Milan?!!).