Eggless Vanilla and Chocolate Zebra Cake.

There are people who love Vanilla flavored cakes and well as Chocolate flavored cakes.  For people who love both Vanilla and chocolate flavors  together, a "Vanilla and Chocolate Zebra Striped Cake" is the perfect recipe. Kids gets excited when they see such patterns and stripes.

This recipe doesnt require any whipped creames or icing for the topping. Those simple stripes and patterns make it exciting enough.

Enjoy it with a cup of tea or coffee...Kids would surely love it with a cup of warm milk.
I was planning to make small patterns for my muffin tray for a party and used the leftover batter to bake a thin  striped cake.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups all purpose flour / maida
• 5 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup + 1 tbsp  hot water, divided ( 1 tbsp  for the chcolate batter)
• 1 cup + 1 tbsp - granulated sugar ( 1 tbsp  for the chcolate batter)
• 1/2 cup oil 
• 1/2 cup Indian yoghurt or sour cream
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

 Method:

Lightly grease the base of a  8” or 9” round pan and dust it with plain flour and tap to remove excess flour.

In a large bowl, assemble the dry ingredients- the flour, baking powder and baking soda and sieve together to make the mixture uniform and prevent lumps in the flour mixture.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

In another bowl put in the 1/2 cup hot water and sugar and blend with a mixer until the sugar partly melts. Quickly stir in the oil and the yogurt and mix well.

Stir in the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, add the vanilla extract and mix well using a hand mixer until you get a smooth batter, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Divide the batter into 2 halves. Keep the Vanilla flavored batter aside. In another bowl put in the cocoa powder and extra 1 tbsp water  and sugar into one half. Mix well and beat for a minute until the mixture is smooth.
The  batter is to be divided to --- 1/2 vanilla batter + 1/2 vanilla batter with cocoa

Remove half of the batter and set it aside in a bowl. Sift the cocoa powder in the remaining batter. Add  1 tbsp hot water and 1 tbsp sugar to the cocoa flavoured  batter in the mixing bowl. Mix for about 30 seconds.
 Be sure to use a sifter to avoid cocoa lumps in the batter.

To make the stripes spoon about 3 tablespoons of vanilla batter into the center of the cake pan. Next, spoon 3 tablespoons of the chocolate batter into the center of the vanilla batter. This causes the vanilla batter to spread out. Continue to alternate batters, in bulls-eye fashion until all batter is used. You will now have thin rings of each batter on the outer edges of the pan, thicker rings towards the center.Don’t worry if it’s not very neat.

Bake in the middle rack of an oven at  180C/350F. After 15 minutes lower the heat to 150C/300F and bake for 30 minutes more or until  the cake is cooked through.

 To check whether the cake is cooked or not, insert a skewer or tooth prick into the centre and it should come out clean. If the skewer is clean, turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool before serving. If not, bake for another 4-5 mins and recheck.