The Pleasures of Cooking: Zebra Cake

So I was home and bored, didn't what to do and kill the time. When I thought Baking kills the time , I like doing it and I haven't baked any cake for this new year 2013. So I decided to go in the kitchen and have a quick look at what I have in my cupboards that I could use. So I found I had all the basics to get started. Firstly it was meant to be a marble cake, but on second thought , zebra cake sounds better and looks prettier . So here we go . It's really good cake for kids and adults, especially good tea time cake. Enjoy baking .

Zebra Cake

Ingredients

230g of self raising flour

225g of softened unsalted butter

4 eggs

225g caster sugar

100 ml of milk

25g of cocoa pwder

1 tsp vanilla extract

Zest of an orange

4 tbsp of sunflower oil

Method

Pre heat the oven on 170 degrees. Get all the things ready and measured. In a mixing bowl , sift the sugar and add the softened butter. I put the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften quickly and easier to beat then. Beat well with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs one by one and beat well, it might look a little bit curdled to start with , it's not a bad thing. Sift the flour in and fold it in, it will be very thick at this point the cake mix.Add the baking powder. Add the milk and beat again. The mixture will be a little bit smoother , but it will still be quite thick.

Now the best thing to do at this point before mixing anything else . Divide the cake mix in two. One of them need to have a little bit more weight in.

Mine were as follows: VANILLA MIX:- 430 g

: COCOA MIX :- 510 g

You don't need to follow exactly my guide lines for measures, but I found it worked really well for me.

So I then put the vanilla extract in the vanilla mix with two table spoons of sunflower oil to make it a bit smoother. Then add the cocoa powder, orange zest and another 2 table spoons of sunflower oil in the cocoa mix.

Time to start assembling your cake. Line your cake tin with some sunflower oil. Start with any flavour mix you like, I started with the cocoa one,as I had more of it. Put a blob in the middle of the tin in the shape of a circle Then add another blob a little bigger this time with the cocoa mix which will completely cover the other blob, and keep repeating this until you finish the batter and fill your cake tin.

Bake in the pre heated oven for 30/35 minutes. To check the cake insert a toothpick in the middle of the cake, if it comes out clean the cake is ready.