If there’s something that cannot be missing on a social distancing afternoon is cake. Cake has this thing that makes you feel at home, protected and just happy. Even more so if you pair it with a cup of tea or coffee. This Zebra Bundt Cake made with vanilla and chocolate batter is GORGEOUS, fun to make and the result is amazing.
Long live cakes!
The base for this Zebra Bundt Cake is my Vanilla Bundt Cake that so many of you make on a regular basis. The difference is that for this one I only use granulated sugar (on the vanilla recipe I also use brown sugar) and also half of the batter gets turned to chocolate. There are plenty of cake recipes on this blog, more than I should admit, lol! It’s just that they’re so delicious that it becomes irresistible to make more. One of the most famous cake recipes on here is my clementine cake.
Zebra Bundt Cake
This marbling effect looks gorgeous, right? On the outside, it looks more like a tiger because the vanilla dough becomes golden, but on the inside, it’s definitely a zebra, lol. To make this type of marbling you need to place the vanilla and chocolate batters in separate pastry bags and go around your bundt pan with one flavour and then the next on top of that. If you don’t have pastry bags, you can do a classic marbling instead. For this, you place a tablespoon of one flavour in the pan and the other flavour next to it until you fill up the whole pan. Then you grab a stick or knife and swirl them around to have a nice marbling effect. Another marbled recipe I urge you to try is my Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread.
Different pans
If you’re not using a bundt pan like me with a hole in the centre, but rather a round cake pan, you make the zebra pattern by only applying the doughs at the centre so that you create rings of dough. In the case of cake pans, I always recommend that you place baking paper at the base to make sure that it will come off perfectly. If, on the other hand, you want to make half a recipe, you can use a rectangular pan of 11x22cm / 4.3×8.6in. For that pan, you make the marbling by making a line along the centre.
Zebra Bundt Cake
Print Pin RateIngredients
For the batter
- 180 g unsalted butter at room temperature
- 50 g canola or vegetable oil
- 2 tsp salt use only 1 tsp if your butter is salted
- 360 g granulated sugar
- 4 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract can be replaced with vanilla essence
- 240 ml milk of any kind
- 400 g all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
For the marbling
- 5 tbsp cocoa powder ideally 100% cacao
- 3 tbsp milk any kind
Instructions
For the batter
- Whip up the butter with the sugar, salt and oil until the mix becomes lighter. You can do this with an electric mixer or using a hand-held whisk.
- Add the eggs and beat them again until they are fully incorporated and the mix looks airy. From all the whipping, the mix should thicken and start to unstick from the sides of the bowl. If you would like to add the honey mentioned in the post, you add it at this time.
- Add the milk and vanilla extract and mix. It will look split, but don't worry. It will come back with the flour.
- Add the flour and baking powder and mix.
For the marbling
- Divide the cake batter in half. For this I actually weigh out the batter and divide it in half.
- Mix half of the dough with the cocoa powder and once that's incoporated, add the mik and mix it in as well.
- Place the vanilla batter in one pastry bag and the chocolate batter in a different one.
- Grease your bundt pan with oil or soft butter. You can paint it on or use a piece of kitchen paper to spread it around. Flour the mould. After distributing the flour around the inside of the mould, turn it upside down and pat it to remove the excess.
- Make a ring at the base of your bundt pan with one flavour. On top of it, make a ring with the other flavour. Eventually, you will see that the dough will start to spread out as you pipe more and more. Continue until you have used up all the batter. If you are using a cake pan, do this just at the centre of the pan making a circle within a circle. If you're using a rectangular pan, do this as a line down the centre.
- Bake the cake at 180°C/350°F for 40min-1hour or until a knife comes out clean. It's important to not overcook it to prevent it from drying out. If you have an electric oven, check the cake at the 30-minute mark. If it's golden enough on top, change the heat source to only the bottom.
- Unmould the cake while it's still hot.
