What A Lovely Zebra Cake

Photo and recipe created by Cookies, Cakes and Carbs. Video here.

My family celebrates a lot of summer birthdays. We either buy torte cakes from a good European bakery, or make cakes, using real vanilla, dark chocolate and nuts. We try to eat cakes worth their calories. This year I'm making a zebra cake. Doesn't it look devine? 

For your benefit, I will type the recipe below, as well as, link it to its original source. Tweaks: To my cake batter, I will add ¼ cup of very finely ground, toasted walnuts ... and to the black batter ONLY ... a little ground dark chocolate and instant coffee. Reportedly, you can't substitute butter for vegetable oil in the cake batter, or you won't get the zebra design. So don't do it! Butter makes the batter too thick for the design to take effect.

Zebra Cake

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups all purpose flour

2 cups sugar (I use ½ cup less.)
¾ cups vegetable oil (I use a light olive oil.)
1 teaspoon vanilla (I use more.)
2 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 cup milk
white, pink, and black gel food coloring
vanilla butter cream frosting (see below)
black fondant
pink butter cream
Wilton tip 1A
Optional: dark chocolate and instant coffee 

Directions: 

(Preheat the oven to 350F.)
1. In a mixing bow, combine the flour, sugar and baking powder.  

2. One at a time, add the eggs, milk, vegetable oil and vanilla.  Beat for 2 minutes, or until all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. [Here's where I add ¼ cup of nuts.]

3. Divide the batter into three separate bowls, with one bowl having half of the batter and the other two having a quarter each.

4. Color the large bowl with white color gel, and the two smaller bowls with black and pink color gels, respectively.  Mix the coloring thoroughly until no light streaks remain.  [I add dark chocolate and instant coffee to the black batter.]

5. Grease two 8 inch pans.  

6. Place four tablespoons of white batter into the center of each pan.  Then, directly into the middle of the white batter, place two tablespoons of black batter.  Directly into the center of the black batter, place two tablespoons of pink batter.  Repeat white/black/pink batter additions until all the batter is used up, or the pans are ⅔ full.  

7. Place the cake pans into the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  

8. Allow to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, remove from the pan, and cool completely on a wire wrack.

9. Once the cake is cool, level, stack and cover in white butter cream.

10. To cut the fondant pieces, roll fondant out very thinly and using a rolling cutter (pizza or pastry) slice long, narrow stripes and arrange on the white cake as desired.  

11. To finish the cake off, using the pink butter cream with Wilton 1A tip, pipe a small beaded border along the bottom of the cake.

Personally, I will make butter cream frosting, myself (easy), but buy the fondant for the zebra stripes (too time consuming!). Sometimes I make whipped cream frosting. It's not as sweet. Lastly, a few strategically placed fresh stawberries are a lovely garnish. Enjoy!

You may also enjoy:

Eat A Peach Cake

A Fancy Vanilla Cake

Lets Eat Hummingbird Cake  
Sacher-Torte, The Perfect Birthday Cake