Cream Cheese Marbled Chocolate Cake

Blogging has made me use fancy words. Don't be confused with the title. This is nothing but 'Black Bottom Cupcakes' whose recipe is floating around the internet. Only thing that is different here is I baked it in a cake pan instead of in a cupcake pan and instead of just using the cream cheese as a filler, I marbled it with the cake batter.
I had to make a snack for my kid's class and she was reading a book to her class - a story of two penguin brothers. There is no food involved anywhere in the story. At first, I thought I will make sugar cookies in the shape of penguins. But, I don't have a penguin cookie cutter. Then I thought if I make this marbled cake, it'll at least have black and white on it. Only, it is not black and white, just brown and not so white.
I used the recipe from here. Made some minor changes in the way I baked.
Here is my version..

Ingredients:
For the Chocolate Cake part:

• All purpose flour - 1 1/2 cups
• Sugar - 1 cup
• Cocoa powder - 1/4 cup
• Baking soda - 1 tsp
• Salt - 1/2 tsp
• Water - 1 cup
• Oil - 1/3 cup
• Vinegar - 1 TBSP (I used apple cider vinegar)
• Vanilla - 1 tsp

For the cream cheese part:

• Cream cheese - One 8 Oz block well softened
• Sugar - 1/3 cup
• Egg - 1
• Vanilla - 1/2 tsp
• Milk chocolate chips - 1 cup

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a 9 X 13 baking pan with parchment paper and lightly spray with vegetable oil spray. I made a mistake and lined it with aluminum foil. It got messy while removing from the pan. Beat cream cheese till smooth. Add sugar, egg and vanilla and beat till well combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Set aside. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar for the cake part, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder. Stir with a whisk. In another bowl, combine oil, water, vinegar and vanilla. Whisk it well. Now, dump all of the liquid onto the dry ingredients. Stir to combine. Pour into the prepared baking pan. Spoon the cream cheese mixture on the cake batter. Take a knife and swirl gently to get a marbled effect. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes or till a toothpick inserted in the center (cake part, not cream cheese part) comes out clean . This is a fudgy cake. If you bake too long, it will get dry. Mine was done at 35 minutes. I checked once after 30 minutes. Let it cool completely in the pan on a wire rack. It is easier to slice them well if you let them sit in the refrigerator for an hour or so. I made very small slices and got around 35 pieces. I had to send in more than 3/4th of that to school. Since this has cream cheese, I usually refrigerate after it has cooled down. It is alright to leave them out for a couple of hours, but not for too long.

Variation to make it egg less:
I used egg in the recipe this time. But, I do have a very good idea how to make this egg less. Use ener-G or just mix 2 TBSP of warm water with 2 TBSP of corn starch and use it in the place of the egg.

You can add about half a cup of any berry preserve/jam to the cream cheese mixture and then marble the cake. I think it would look very pretty. I wanted to keep it simple so didn't do any of those.

For those who like baking with cake mixes, use a devil's food cake (any brand). Mix it up as per instructions and use that for the cake part. Bake as per the box instructions.

All the kids loved it in school or so my daughter tells.

Happy Baking!!