Guest Post: Zebra Cake

Today, we are honoured to have the wonderful Angela, aka Momzilla, join us for some baking fun. Angela is a writer and a mother, with all that that entails :o) She also maintains the fantastic blog, The Bookshelf Muse - a muse-consult resource for any would-be writer! Read on, as Angela walks us through the creation of a fantastic Zebra Cake.

The other day I was trolling the internet for a show stopper dessert that didn’t require a massive effort.  When I tripped upon the Zebra Cake recipe, I knew I had found exactly what I needed.

This cake is deceptively easy to prepare. Once you get the hang of layering the chocolate and white batters, you’ll finish in no time at all, and end up with a cake that everyone will want to know how you made.

INGREDIENTS

4 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup milk, at room temperature
1/2 cup oil (vegetable or canola)

1/2 cup butter, melted
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tb vanilla
1 Tb baking powder
1 square (1oz) of Baker’s unsweetened chocolate *note you can also use a dark, unsweetened cocoa powder, 2-3 Tbs should do it

In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs and sugar. Using an electric mixer or whisk, beat until creamy and light in color. Add milk, vanilla, butter and oil, and continue beating until well blended.

In a separate bowl, mix flour and baking powder. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and beat just until the batter is smooth and the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Do not overbeat or air pockets will form in the batter.

At this point, separate the batter evenly into two bowls. In one, add the chocolate and stir just until mixed. The batter should not be thick and puffy nor too watery. If after adding the chocolate, one of the batters appears thicker than the other, a small amount of milk or flour (as needed) should even things out. Take a round spring form pan, two tablespoons and get ready to make magic.

 You can start with either colored batter. The trick is to drizzle 2 heaping Tablespoonfuls in the center of the pan, always placing the batter on top of each other. You don’t need to shake or tilt the pan to get the batter to spread as it will slowly do this on its own.

By the time you finish both batters, you will end up with something that looks like a bull’s eye! Pop it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes (use a toothpick to judge doneness as ovens differ!) then let it sit for 10 minutes before removing from the pan. 

Cool completely, and serve with some sweetened whipped cream and a chocolate drizzle!

Tips:

--If you don’t want to mess around with spoons, pour batters into Ziploc bags and dispense evenly.

--Try adding a flavoring to the white batter and the whipped cream. I used 1/3 cup of Baileys in mine and then compensated by adding a bit of flour and YUM. Ditto with the whipped cream…a little Caramel Baileys really gave the cake zing.

Brown Bread Blueberry Crumble

This is something I made aaages ago one night when we felt like something sweet, had some bread that needed using as was too good to waste by freezing, and didn't have much else in the house :D

The Recipe

450g (1 large packet) frozen blueberries
2 tblspn caster sugar
3-4 tblspn water
1c fresh brown bread crumbs
1/2c brown sugar (preferably dark)
1/4c plain flour
about 75g butter or margarine (I just used 2 large tablespoon-scoops)

Put the blueberries, sugar and water in a pot and simmer for I think 12? minutes. Meanwhile, put all the other ingredients together in a bowl and rub the butter into the dry ingredients using only your fingertips until crumbs form.


Transfer the blueberries to an oven-proof dish. Top with the crumbs and bake at 180C (350F) for 10-15 mins until the topping is crisp and browned.

Serve hot or cold with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

The Results

This was an interesting mix of savoury and sweet. It was definitely a dessert, but the brown bread crumbs added an interesting savoury undertone. I'd highly recommend this for people like my husband who aren't too fond of over-sweet dishes.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

I first made these cupcakes for a baby shower in early March. They were gorgeous at the time, so when my Nana said her favourite dessert was lemon meringue pie and I was assigned the task of baking her birthday cake, I knew I had to make these beauties again. The pics are from the first time around - the second time the cakes came out much neater and prettier, but I didn't bother with the silver cachous or flowers, so they didn't look quite so fancy.

The recipe is mostly taken from the Australian Women's Weekly Cupcake cookbook.



The Recipe

Cake
about 4 Nice biscuits (not sure what the American equiv would be)
125g butter
2t finely grated lemon rind
2/3c caster sugar
2 eggs
1/3c milk
3/4c desiccated coconut
1 1/4c self raising flour

Curd
4 egg yolks
1/3c caster sugar
2t finely grated lemon rind
1/4c lemon juice
40g butter

Meringue
4 egg whites
1c caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180C and thoroughly grease a 12-hole muffin tin. Crush the Nice biscuits (in a processor is quickest and easiest) and place a few teaspoons in each muffin hole. Shake the pan around until the base and most of the sides are coated in crumbs.

Combine all ingredients for the curd in a small saucepan. Stir constantly until mixture thickens slightly and coats the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, cover, and refrigerate until cold (ha, I didn't do this either time and it worked just fine).

For the cake, beat butter*, rind, sugar and eggs with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in milk and coconut, then sifted flour. Spoon into pan and smooth surfaces. Bake for about 25mins, then turn the cakes out on a rack to cool, and turn the oven up to 220C.

*The second time I made these I was softening the butter in the microwave and accidentally melted it completely. HOWEVER, the texture of these cakes was AMAZING - and the only thing I did different to the first time was the melted butter. So I recommend melting the butter ;) Just make sure it's cool before you combine it with the egg - you don't want to curdle the eggs!!

Cut a 2cm (2/3inch) hole in the centre of each cake and fill with curd. "Discard" the cake tops - which obviously means eat them. Make meringue (beat egg whites with electric mixer until soft peaks form; gradually at sugar and beat until thick and glossy) and spoon it into a piping bag. Pipe the meringue onto each cake. Place cakes on a hot tray and bake for about 5 mins, until meringue is lightly browned.

Devour!! :D

Dead Easy Scones

So, my sister was at a play last weekend, and they had scones for afternoon tea. She mentioned this, and the general consensus from everyone in the room was that we wanted scones... So, I went and made scones. The recipe is a mishmash of a couple of recipes I found on the internet.

The Recipe

2c self raising flour
1/4c castor sugar
1/4t salt
2/3c cream
2/3c lemonade

Sift the flour, sugar and salt. Fold in the cream and lemonade. Don't over-mix, or the scones will become tough. I mixed until it was just combined - there were a couple of small streaks of flour still. The dough will be quite wet still.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Pat it down to about 3/4 inch thick (you might need to use some more flour to do this so it doesn't stick to your hands!). I used a 7cm (~1.5 inch?) cutter, dipped in flour after every second cut, to cut out the scones. Remember to press down in one smooth, firm movement, and don't twist as you remove the cutter (can cause the scones to twist in the oven).

Place scones on a light greased tray; they won't spread much so you can put them reasonably close. Bake for 12 mins at 210C in fan forced oven, or 220C in a non-fan forced.

Remove from oven and eat hot with whipped cream and jam!

The Results

Gorgeous! The are the most light, fluffy scones ever. I think I was being a bit paranoid in terms of over-mixing, which probably helps o.O :) If you're more into dense, heavy scones, either don't make these or mix them a bit more - which I'm going to try. But if you're into light and fluffy - yum! They browned up quite a bit on the outside, and didn't rise a lot, but they were yum :)