Zebra Cake For A Birthday

Kids’ birthdays fall within a gap of 5 days. I wanted to bake a birthday cake for the elder one, but he rejected the proposal as he wanted Harry Potter cake from bakery.. Disheartened I focused on the younger one’s birthday cake (atleast he wasn’t old enough to turn down  mamma’s cake … ) I was planning to make a fondant cake for quite some time ( inspired by Dina’s fondant cakes and Dima’s blogpost on how to cover cake with fondant ) … I decided to make a zebra cake as it would make hubby  (who doesn’t like chocolate) eat some …

The cake came out well… But in retrospect I could have doubled the quantity to make the cake bigger.. I applied a coating of whipped cream and kept the cake in fridge for about an hour.

As it was my first attempt on fondant , I had planned to keep it simple… Light blue cake with orange polka dots.. I was okay with the result, but when I showed it to my elder son, his reply was “Oh this is a baby cake!!! Doesn’t look good!!!”.. hmphhhh !!! I pulled out all the orange circles, rolled each into small roses and fixed them back.. Though not quite impressed , the kid was okay with the final result..

But the biggest disappointment came when both kids didn’t like the taste of fondant 😦 .. They wanted the cake, but  without the icing please !!! Huh…  I think I should stick back to old whipped cream frosting for sometime …

The recipe for the cake is the same that I used in Checkerboard Cake…  Only the method is different.

Ingredients

• Butter – 1 cup
• Granulated Sugar – 2 cups
• Eggs, yolk and white separated – 4
• Flour – 3 cups
• Baking powder – 4 tsp
• Salt – ¾ tsp
• Milk – 1 1/2 cup
• Cocoa – 4 tbsp
• Boiling water – 5tbsp
• Baking soda – 1/8 tsp
• Almond essence – ¼ tsp
• Vanilla essence – 1 tsp

Method

1. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Powder the sugar.
2. Using an electric beater,  cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating after adding each.
3. Add 1/2 of the flour and mix it into the batter using your hand. Add ½ cup milk and mix again. Repeat the process with the remaining flour and milk. Add vanilla essence.
4. Add cocoa powder and baking soda to boiling water and mix well.
5. Divide the batter into 2  halves… To one part add cocoa mixture.
6. Pour a big ladle of plain batter to the middle of the prepared cake tin.  Then pour a big ladle of cocoa batter into center of the plain batter. Again pour a ladle of plain batter to the center of the cocoa batter. Repeat this alternately so that you get concentric circles of plain batter and the cocoa batter.  (The batter will spread out evenly by itself…)
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C  till a tester comes out clean (around 30 min)

Sending this to Bakefest hosted by Vardhini at Zesty Palette

 

• Birthday Cake
• cake
• cocoa powder
• fondant
• icing
• Zebra cake