Erin Mann is baking a new cake every week for a year from the "All Cakes Considered" cookbook and shares her adventures here on AnnArbor.com. Read past columns here.

The cake campaign continues with a marbled confection of peppermint, chocolate and rum flavors. When two stories of congressional sex scandals made the nightly news, "All Cakes Considered" author Melissa Gray developed the recipe for Naughty Senator Cake. She explains what each flavor represents:

"Peppermint, because the senators and congresspeople I've met over the years at NPR always seem to smell of mint. It's a public speaking thing ... Chocolate, because it's rich and so are most senators. Rum, because, well, rum means debauchery to me. Or at least a sizable impairment of good judgment."

A marbled cake is made by lightly blending a light and dark batter. I mixed a batter and poured half of it into a second mixing bowl. I added unsweetened cocoa to one bowl of batter and good quality peppermint extract and a few drops of green food coloring to the other bowl. I layered the batters in my Bundt pan starting with 2/3 of the green peppermint batter, followed by all the chocolate batter and topped it with the remaining green batter.

The marbling technique is surprisingly simple. The key is to avoid over-mixing. You want a nice contrast between the two colors, not a muddled, streaky mess of batter. I re-visited my folding lessons from Swedish Visiting Cake. I slowly spun the pan two full rotations as I folded the batter about eight times.

The cake looked like the Chocolate Pound Cake when I unmolded it from the pan. Cutting into it revealed intricate swirling patterns of brown and green cake and a subtle, comforting scent of chocolate and peppermint.

The cake inspired me to create a vanilla-mint whipped cream to use as a topping. I scraped the seeds from the inside of a vanilla bean and soaked them in a cup of heavy whipping cream in the fridge overnight. When I was ready to serve the cake I whipped the cream until it was light and foamy and mixed in a couple spoonfuls of confectioner's sugar and about a half teaspoon of mint extract. The homemade whipped cream was an excellent complement to the cake.

Naughty Senator Cake won the popular vote. Many were surprised at how well the flavors tasted together when they sampled the cake. One taster remarked that it reminded her of an Andes after-dinner mint.

Not a fan of mint? This recipe lends itself to variations. Other flavor extracts and colorings could easily be substituted for the peppermint extract. I'd like to make this cake again using orange or cherry flavors with the chocolate. Imbibe Magazine provides the recipe here. Give it a try. I guarantee this cake will get your vote.

Erin Mann is a contributor for AnnArbor.com. She is a lover of all things cake and welcomes your baking wisdom. Email her at SheGotTheBeat@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter. Facebook users can also keep up-to-date with A CAKE A WEEK by joining the group.