Zebra cake

• 20 minutes to prepare • 45 minutes to cook • Serves 12

Be unique

 

The taste of today's cake reminds of childhood probably for many of us but the visual effect is definitely new.
Few people are indeed familiar with this cocoa and vanilla cake, made in zebra style.

Still a bit warm, along a cold cup of milk, zebra cake makes a delicious treat.
Trying to recreate the taste I remembered - while coping with a limited selection of available ingredients in my cupboard - I gathered more recipes and finally decided to go for the healthiest list of ingredients: I chose to use seed oil instead of butter, and I did not have milk...so I simply used water. Moreover, I also reduced the sugar that other recipes employed.
The batter was anyway so creamy and delicious that you could just eat it as it is!

You can serve this zebra cake as it is with milk or coffee or can also make a chocolate glaze on top for a more sophisticated look.
Jazz up afternoon tea with this eye-catching stripy cake: it is super easy once you know the trick!

Here are ingredients for a 12-serving recipe (24-cm diameter baking pan):

200 g sugar
300 g flour 00
1 sachet vanilla baking powder
4 eggs
40 g dark cocoa powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
140 g water
130 g seed oil
salt

1. Preheat oven to 180°
2. Beat egg yolks with sugar until the mixture is puffy
3. Gradually add water and oil to the mixture of egg and sugar
4. Incorporate sifted flour and baking powder and beat with a whisk to have no lumps. Add a pinch of salt, too
5. Beat the egg whites until stiff
6. Incorporate egg whites to the mixture. Mix gently with a spoon
7. Pour half of the mixture into a separate bowl and stir in the vanilla extract. In the other bowl, mix the cocoa
8. Grease and flour the baking pan. Use one tablespoon for each bowl to create the layers of batter on the prepared pan. Begin from the middle of the pan, take one spoon of white batter then over it add a spoon of chocolate batter and repeat this steps until all batter has been used. Bake the cake at 180° for 45 minute. (Do not open the oven for at least the first half of the baking time and perform the toothpick test at the end, to be sure baking is done)
   
9. Leave the cake to cool a bit in the oven with the door open, then out of the oven. Garnish the top with some icing sugar, if you like

Nutrition Facts are detailed in the table below. Data is provided per serving.

Everytime I look at a zebra, I can't figure out whether it's black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.