A travel cake is built to keep, and this one keeps beautifully. The French gâteau de voyage is a dense keeping cake, meant to be sliced thin over several days rather than eaten warm from the tin. This version marbles a plain batter against a matcha batter, folds Bordier semi-salted butter into both, and punctuates the whole thing with amarena cherries. It bakes for 45 minutes, and the work before that is mostly whipping and folding.
At a glance
- Difficulty: Easy
- Serves: 4
- Active time: Not given by Bordier. Allow about 25 minutes in our kitchen.
- Cook: 45 minutes at 170°C / 338°F (gas mark 5)
- Key ingredient: Semi-salted (demi-sel) Bordier Butter
Why this works
Bordier's demi-sel is semi-salted at 2.8% fine salt, churned by hand in Brittany on a traditional wooden malaxeur. Its character shifts with the season, and in summer it carries clear caramel and hazelnut notes. That matters here because there are only 40 grams of butter in the entire cake. A commodity butter at that quantity would read as fat and nothing else. This one reads as flavour, and the salt does real work: it pushes back against 130 grams of sugar and against matcha, which is grassy and genuinely bitter.
The structure is the other half of the story. There is no baking powder in this batter. Everything holding the cake up comes from egg whites whipped to a meringue, which is why the whites need to be at room temperature and why every fold after that has to be gentle. The butter goes in softened and last, barely worked, so its flavour stays forward instead of being creamed into the sugar and cooked flat. Splitting the meringue in two and folding matcha into only one half is what gives you the marble: two batters spooned into the same tin, never stirred together.
Ingredients
Weigh everything before you start whipping. Once the meringue is up, you want to be folding, not measuring.
| Ingredient | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| Semi-salted Bordier butter, softened, plus a little for the tin | 40 g | 1.4 oz (about 3 tbsp) |
| Flour, sifted | 45 g | 1.6 oz (about 1/3 cup) |
| Green matcha tea | 2 tsp | 2 tsp |
| Caster sugar, plus a little for dusting | 130 g | 4 1/2 oz (about 2/3 cup) |
| Egg whites, at room temperature | 130 g | 4 1/2 oz (about 4 large whites) |
| Amarena cherries | 45 g | 1.6 oz |
Method
Step 1: Prepare the tin and whip the meringue
Butter the cake tin with a little softened butter and dust it with sugar, then set it aside. Quarter the amarena cherries. Weigh out every remaining ingredient now. Beat the egg whites at room temperature, adding the sugar a little at a time. Once the mixture has become a meringue, add the rest of the sugar and fold it through with a wooden spoon. Divide the meringue into two equal halves.
Step 2: Fold the two batters
Into the first half, fold the sifted flour gently with a wooden spoon, then fold in the softened Bordier butter. Into the second half, fold the sifted flour together with the matcha, again working delicately, then fold in the softened Bordier butter. Preheat the oven to 170°C / 338°F (gas mark 5).
Step 3: Marble, stud, and bake
Spoon the two mixtures into the tin at random, alternating them. Two piping bags do this better than a spoon if you have them. Punctuate the batter with the quartered amarena cherries as you go. Dust the top with a little sugar and bake for 45 minutes. Test with the tip of a knife or a toothpick: when it comes out almost dry and clean, the cake is done.
Tips from our kitchen
- Room temperature is not optional. Cold egg whites whip slowly and hold less air, and cold butter will not fold into a meringue without knocking it flat. Pull both out an hour ahead. The butter should dent under a finger without smearing.
- Split the flour and the butter evenly. Bordier gives one total quantity of each and then asks you to divide the batter in two, without saying how to split them. Our guidance is to halve both: roughly 22 g of flour and 20 g of butter per bowl. Weigh rather than eyeball it, or the two batters will bake at different rates.
- Fold, do not stir. Cut down through the middle with the spoon, sweep along the bottom of the bowl, and turn the mixture over on itself. Rotate the bowl a quarter turn between folds. Stop the moment you stop seeing dry flour. Overworked meringue batter bakes dense and slightly greasy, and it sinks in the middle as it cools.
- Use a small tin. Bordier does not name a size. For four servings we use a small loaf tin of about 8 by 4 inches. Anything wider spreads the batter thin, and 45 minutes will dry it out.
- Pat the cherries dry. Amarena cherries come in heavy syrup. Drain them, blot them on a towel, and quarter them. Wet cherries bleed into the marble and leave damp pockets in the crumb.
- Choose culinary-grade matcha, not ceremonial. Ceremonial matcha is delicate and expensive, and its subtlety is wasted against sugar and butter. Culinary grade holds its colour and its bitterness through a 45-minute bake.
How to serve it
Cool the cake completely in the tin, then slice it thin. It is better on day two than on the day it is baked, once the crumb has settled and the salt has spread through it. Serve it with black tea or a plain espresso, and put a dish of cold semi-salted butter on the table alongside it, because a thin scrape of it on a cut slice is very good. If you want to understand what makes this butter behave differently from what is in a US supermarket, our guide to Bordier butter covers the churning and the seasonality.
Where to buy Bordier Salted Butter in the US
The French Pantry ships Bordier butter across the United States in insulated overnight packaging, straight from the workshop in Brittany.
- Churned Salted Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): the demi-sel, semi-salted at 2.8% fine salt, with the caramel and hazelnut character that carries this cake.
For the flavoured butters and the rest of the range, browse the Maison Bordier collection.
Frequently asked questions
How much Bordier butter do I need for this cake?
The recipe calls for 40 g, plus a little more for greasing the tin. A Bordier block is 4.4 oz (125 g), so one block covers this cake roughly three times over. Buy one block and use the rest on toast.
Can I use unsalted butter instead?
You can, but the cake changes. The salt in the demi-sel is what keeps 130 g of sugar from flattening the matcha. If you only have unsalted Bordier butter, add a scant 1/4 teaspoon of fine sea salt to the flour to get close. We would not substitute a standard American butter here, because at 40 g in a whole cake there is nothing to hide behind.
How should I store the butter?
Keep it wrapped and refrigerated, and take out only what you need. Bordier butter has a high fat content and picks up other smells easily, so keep it away from onions and strong cheese. Once you have opened a block, press the paper back against the cut face.
Does Bordier butter need refrigeration?
Yes. Bordier butter is a fresh, hand-churned product and ships cold. Refrigerate it as soon as it arrives, and only bring the portion you are baking with up to room temperature.
How long does the cake keep?
This is a keeping cake by design. Wrapped well and left at room temperature, it holds for several days and the crumb improves after the first one. Do not refrigerate it, which dries the crumb and mutes the butter.
Can I make it without a piping bag?
Yes. Bordier suggests two piping bags as the better method, but two spoons work. Alternate rough spoonfuls of plain and matcha batter into the tin and resist the urge to swirl them with a skewer, which turns a marble into a uniform grey-green.
Related reading
- Bordier Butter: What It Is, Why Chefs Love It, and How to Use It
- How to Choose Your French Butter: A Buyer's Guide
- Madagascar Vanilla Butter Brioche
Recipe and photograph adapted from Maison Bordier, with thanks. The French Pantry is an authorized US retailer of Bordier butter.