Zebra Cake

My friend just baked zebra cake not too long ago. The name
sounds interesting so I got the recipe from her and finally
baked it yesterday. The ingredients are very simple, readily
available for anyone who bakes frequently, so not difficult
for me to decide when to bake it.

The recipe I noticed, is from the blog Farida’s Azerbaijani
Cookbook. Please refer to the site for recipe. The night before
I started baking, i did some searching, and realise some
recipes uses yogurt or condense milk. This recipe I refer to
only says milk, so I used fresh milk (worrying that the batter
might be too runny).

All the mixing is not difficult. I left the mixer to cream the eggs
(used 5 eggs since it requires 4 large ones but mine is not big)
and sugar for me while i measured the other ingredients. Then
I pour in the oil and milk (followed recipe to the T but it does
seems a huge amount of sugar and oil). The difficult part is the
mixing of flour cos the batter is already very full (ok my mixer
bowl is too small). The flour also get lumpy easily. Finally, it
came to the last part of preparing the batter for baking.

I have read that some batter are too watery that it runs over
the chocolate part, so i did my pouring slowly. I went,
white batter, wait, chocolate batter, wait, white batter, wait ..
till the pan is almost full. I did have lovely rings of alternating
white and chocolate. Then I remembered abt banging the cake
tin to remove air bubbles, so i went "thud thud thud" then put
the lovely looking cake into the oven and wait patiently for it
to bake and cool.

The cake still look lovely with the rings on top but the inside,
a disaster. This is how it looks.


I did not lie. There is really rings on top, can you spot it below?


Anyway, not sure if it has to do with the banging or the slow
pouring, that the denser chocolate batter sink down below.
No matter what, it is a tasty cake, infact, just enough sweetness.
I will try again to see if I can create the strips inside the cake.
I would like to thank the recipe owner for the lovely recipe.

烘了个斑马蛋糕。是什么东西？不清楚，可能是因为切了之后，
蛋糕里呈现斑马条纹吧。不过我失败了。蛋糕表面是有纹，但
里头就是半黄半黑的蛋糕。
现在我还不知哪儿出错。可能是我放进烘炉前，为了“除气泡”
敲击桌面所造成， 也可能是我倒粉糊太慢造成？巧克力粉糊
重，就沉底了。
但蛋糕味道好，糖虽多但甜度刚刚好。 我会再试一次看能否
成功。想看真正的斑马蛋糕就请劳驾到
http://azcookbook.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/zebra-cake/ 。