Zebra Cake

It’s time for another fun cyber-baking experience with my good friend Chelle!  As soon as I saw this cake, I knew I had to give it a try.  Such a cool looking cake but not requiring any special tools – wonderful!  All it takes to get this fun effect is some patience.  And while I was putting mine together, (because I had a lot of time to ponder) I started to wonder why I have incredible patience for cooking and baking, but almost no patience in any other area….  I’m still trying to figure that one out 🙂  I had a lot of fun layering the batter to create the stripe effect, hence the many process pictures below.  I would say this cake is definitely more about the look than the taste.  It tastes pretty good, but not any better than just an average cake.  However, the look is well worth it.  I topped mine with Hershey’s perfectly chocolate frosting, which made it taste even better.

I wish I had watched this cake a little more closely while it was baking.  Even though I baked it only 38 minutes, I felt it was a little overdone and more brown than I would have liked.  It also puffed up a LOT during baking.  Not really an issue for me, but if you wanted to make this into a layer cake (which would look REALLY cool!) you would definitely need to level the tops.  I did think the cake tasted even better after a day in the refrigerator. Chelle seemed to have a pretty similar experience to mine, but you can about her zebra cake here.

Just a few stripes…

Looking more like a zebra…

All ready to go in the oven!

Zebra Cake

Ingredients:

4 large eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/8 tsp. almond extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

2 ½ tbsp. cocoa powder

 

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°.  Line a 9-inch round cake pan with a circle of parchment paper.  Lightly grease the bottom and sides of the pan.

 

In a large bowl, mix together the eggs and sugar until mixture is light and creamy and the sugar has been mostly dissolved.  Stir in milk, vegetable oil, vanilla and almond extracts.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Pour into wet ingredients and whisk to combine.  Measure out just over two cups of vanilla batter and put it back into the medium bowl.  Sift cocoa powder over the bowl and whisk until fully incorporated. 

 

Put 3 tablespoons of vanilla batter into the center of the pan and let it spread slightly on its own.  Put 3 tablespoons of chocolate batter in the center of the vanilla.  It will push out the other and, as it sits for a moment, will also spread itself.  Alternating spoonfuls of the two batters, repeat the technique until all the batter has been used up.

 

Bake for 38-42 minutes, until the cake is light gold and a tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. 

 

Let the cake cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, then turn out the cake and remove the parchment paper.  Reinvert onto a wire rack and let cool completely.  Frost if desired.

Source: Baking Bites