Chocolate & raspberry zebra cake

Chocolate & raspberry zebra cake

Childhood favourite, the marble cake, gets an update where precision results in a uniformly stripy sponge

Difficulty and servings

Moderately easy

Makes a 22cm round cake

Preparation and cooking times

Preparation time

Prep 40 mins

Cook time

Cook 1 hr 5 mins

Freezable

Freeze sponge before decorating

Method

  1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line the base of a deep 22cm round cake tin with baking parchment.
  2. To make the raspberry sponge, put the yogurt, oil and raspberries in a food processor or blender, and whizz until well blended. Sieve, to remove the seeds, into a measuring jug, until you reach 300ml. Discard the rest.
  3. From now, make the 2 cakes simultaneously. In 2 mixing bowls, separately mix the dry ingredients, plus a pinch of salt, for the raspberry and chocolate sponges. Crack in the eggs, then add the yogurt, oil and vanilla extract to the chocolate one, and the measured raspberry mixture to the other. Beat each with an electric whisk until smooth, cleaning whisks between bowls. Quickly stir some pink food colouring into the raspberry batter, to give a strong colour - a good cherry pink works well.
  4. Sit the cake tin in front of you and a bowl of cake batter to each side - you need to work quickly and smoothly for the next bit, so make sure your oven is hot and racks are in the right place. Using 2 x ½ cup measurers, or 2 similar ladles or serving spoons, spoon 1 measure (about 150ml) of the chocolate batter into the very centre of the prepared cake tin. Don't wait for it to settle or spread, quickly top with the same measure of raspberry mixture, right in the middle (see Secrets of success, below). Repeat alternating batters, without pausing, until all the mixes are finished, then put straight in the oven.
  5. Bake for 1 hr until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean - keep an eye on it though, you may want to loosely cover with parchment after 45 mins if the cake is looking dark (the top will be cracked). Cool in the tin.
  6. To decorate, put the cream and raspberry jam in a pan, and bring nearly to the boil, stirring to melt the jam. Take off the heat, tip in the chocolate and leave until melted. Stir together until smooth. When thick enough to spread, remove the cake from the tin and swirl the chocolate icing all over the top.
Try

SECRETS OF SUCCESS

Speed is the key, so don't be afraid to sacrifice a little accuracy when filling the tin. The slower you dollop in the batters, the more chance they'll have to spread, and you might end up with a stack of pancakes rather than a swirly zebra!

CONSISTENCY IS KEY!

The batters have to be as similar in consistency as possible - so if too much colouring loosens one, either thicken it with a tablespoon of flour or add a splash of milk to the other to compensate.

PER SERVING (12)

700 kcalories, protein 10g, carbohydrate 73g, fat 41 g, saturated fat 11g, fibre 2g, sugar 40g, salt 0.7 g

Recipe from Good Food magazine, January 2013.

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Latest comments and suggestions

  • Binder photo Seventynil

    03 January 2013

    Seventynil rated and commented on this recipe

    3 stars

    I made this impressive looking cake for a birthday/New Years Eve party. The recipe was fairly straight forward to follow, and the new technique, to get the zebra stripes, was fun (if a bit messy!). It certainly looked like the picture, and I was pretty happy. But...unfortunately not impressed with the flavour...:-( The cake was just a bit 'blurgh' with no real flavour. Quite dry too...though I guess it could have been in the oven a fraction too long. I do a lot of baking, and always get loads of positive comments for my cakes...this one didn't even raise a mmmm and I was left a bit disappointed... I'd still be tempted to try it again with different flavours and colours though, just to see...:-)

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  • Binder photo DebbieT

    13 January 2013

    DebbieT commented on this recipe

    I know Dr. Fudge Finger comment not quiet right, but sorry it had me in stitches. Have not made cake too busy laughing. But I will bake it and leave an apporpriate comment. :0)

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  • Binder photo MrsBarwocle

    13 January 2013

    MrsBarwocle commented on this recipe

    Looks lovely, very effective, but very dry sponge, and as an experienced cake maker was disappointed.

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  • Binder photo Steelbuns

    20 January 2013

    Steelbuns commented on this recipe

    The cake needed an extra 15 minutes in the oven. It looked great when cut, however there was practically no flavour from the cake. Very dissappointed, but will definitely use this technique again with a different recipe to get the effect.

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  • Binder photo SugarRose

    21 January 2013

    SugarRose commented on this recipe

    Fun technique,but this recipe is a taste disaster. Will use the zebra marbling with my own usual choc and vanilla recipe.

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  • Binder photo Matt_Bakes

    21 January 2013

    Matt_Bakes rated and commented on this recipe

    4 stars

    Made this this afternoon for my mum's birthday and she loved it! It wasn't dry at all. Bought single cream by accident so I ended up with a chocolate raspberry sauce instead of a ganache but it still tasted great. Also if I were to make this cake again I would use smaller measurements when filling the tin to get thinner stripes. I also topped it with some defrosted raspberries to compensate for the lack of raspberry flavour in the sponge. Really recommend doing this.

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  • Binder photo Katy s

    27 January 2013

    Katy s rated and commented on this recipe

    3 stars

    Have to confess I too found this VERY dry. Wanted to like it, but am an experienced baker and it did go dry on me. Have a feeling that it would work better is you used a smaller sandwich tin (7inch) and therefore it would need less baking and dry out less. Icing was nice, but needed to add icing sugar to get it to set and I have made ganache icing many times before....

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  • Binder photo Golda Lowden

    29 January 2013

    Golda Lowden commented on this recipe

    I made this cake for the first time on sunday and was really looking forward to it. But unfortunatly the spondge was very dry and tasteless and a rather heavy taste?. If i was to make this in future i would use butter instead of oil and plain flour and baking powder instead of self raising flour.

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  • Binder photo Julie Bahrain

    14 February 2013

    Julie Bahrain rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    Marbling technique was very successful and looked good but cake was disappointing - dry and bland. Have decided that I don't like the flavour of cakes made with oil. The chocolate/raspberry ganache was gorgeous; I think it would make great truffles :-) Would give it 3* but its not working.

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  • Binder photo luciferlandy

    04 March 2013

    luciferlandy rated and commented on this recipe

    2 stars

    Fun cake to make and the recipe was easy to follow but for us the Cake did not hit the spot. We found the cake a nice coincidence but had a Bitter taste which we are not sure what it was. Think we will use the technique for making the cake again but with Different flavours.

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  • Binder photo fraserclarinet

    09 March 2013

    fraserclarinet rated and commented on this recipe

    5 stars

    I have seen that a lot of people didn't like the flavour of this cake and I was concerned I wouldn't either but it is actually delicious. I followed the recipe to the letter with the exception of using fresh raspberries (and more of them, about 130g) instead of frozen ones. The flavour of the cake is a beautiful mixture of chocolate and raspberry and it is not dry at all- it is very moist. Next time I'm going to give it an aditional 5-10 mins in the oven because it was slightly under baked. I really like the zebra effect method and will do it again with other flavours too. One thing I would suggest is that you use very good quality yogurt for this recipe and you may need to add icing sugar to the ganache depending on wether it is too bitter (if you used very dark chocolate as I did) or it may be too runny (due to the addition of the jam to the recipe) and adding icing sugar will help thicken it so it stays on the top of the cake and doesn't drip all over.

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Difficulty and servings

Moderately easy

Makes a 22cm round cake

Preparation and cooking times

Preparation time

Prep 40 mins

Cook time

Cook 1 hr 5 mins

Freezable

Freeze sponge before decorating

Ingredients

  • vegetable oil , for greasing

FOR THE RASPBERRY SPONGE

  • 150ml pot raspberry yogurt
  • 150ml vegetable oil
  • 100g frozen raspberries , defrosted
  • 200g self-raising flour , plus an extra 5 tbsp
  • 140g caster sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • artificial pink food colouring

FOR THE CHOCOLATE SPONGE

  • 200g self-raising flour
  • 140g caster sugar
  • 3 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 2 large eggs
  • 150ml pot natural yogurt
  • 150ml vegetable oil
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract

TO DECORATE

  • 200ml pot double cream
  • 100g seedless raspberry jam
  • 100g bar dark chocolate , roughly chopped
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PER SERVING (12)

700 kcalories, protein 10g, carbohydrate 73g, fat 41 g, saturated fat 11g, fibre 2g, sugar 40g, salt 0.7 g

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