How to Make a Zebra Cake

April 10, 2012 / 56 comments »

Zebra Bundt Cake

I love zebra cakes, but I love a zebra bundt cake more. It just seems like less work. No need to cut layers and the frosting is a simple chocolate glaze. However you like or decide to carve your zebra cake, a zebra styling of any sort is pretty much a guaranteed no-fail dress to impress dessert. I’ve added a step-by-step picture panel for a visual on how to make a zebra cake.

Zebra Bundt Cake

Okay, so my striping is not even close to being perfect like what you see here. But I used a thicker batter, so layering the batter with a spoon proved to be a little bit of a challenge. A quarter of the way through, I switched to a small ice cream scoop and it was so much easier.

For this zebra bundt cake I used a marble poundcake recipe from Tish Boyle’s The Cake Book, while good, I found it wasn’t as moist as I generally like my pound cake. To be fair, I did adapt the recipe by melting the butter instead of creaming of it. Along with that, the original recipe calls for a marbling the pound cake, so I’m not sure if the extra time it took to make it a zebra bundt cake effected the end results in terms of moisture. Aside from those two things, I kept to the recipe and didn’t change anything else.

A few notes:

To layer the pound cake for the zebra effect use a an ice cream scoop with a release lever for easy handling.
Cake can be made one day ahead and kept tightly wrapped on the counter.

Zebra Bundt Cake

(adapted from Tish Boyle, The Cake Book)
Makes 1 10 inch cake. | Preparation: Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Cover bundt pan with bake spray and dust with flour.

Ingredients:
Cake

3 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 ½ cups granulated sugar, divided
½ cup natural (not Dutch-processed) cocoa powder
6 tablespoons water
1 ½ cups unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
5 large eggs
½ cup whole milk

Glaze

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate
⅔ cup heavy cream

Instructions:
To make cake

Sift flour baking powder and salt into a bowl; set aside.
In a separate medium size bowl add in ½ cup of sugar, the cocoa powder, and water then whisk until mixture is smooth; set aside.
Place melted butter and sugar in a stand mixer bowl fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat on medium high until mixture is blended, about 1 minute. Add in vanilla and beat until combined. Add and beat eggs one at time, mixing well after each addition. Once all eggs are added, beat mixture until it becomes light and fluffy (it will resemble pancake batter, but slightly thinner).
Turn mixer speed down to low and add the flour in three additions, alternating with the milk in two additions and mixing just until blended.
Add 2 cups of the batter to the cocoa mixture and stir until blended.
Using an ice cream scoop, pour two scoops of vanilla mixture into pan. Now alternate and pour one scoop of chocolate mixture on top of vanilla mixture. Continue to alternate between vanilla and chocolate layers until bundt pan is filled.
Bake zebra pound cake for 50-60 minutes at 350 degrees F or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool cake in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto the rack and cool completely.

To make glaze