We had a birthday or two in the house this past weekend. My beautiful little girl is not so little it seems, as she celebrated her 11th birthday this past Saturday. Eleven already! She is turning into such a dynamic young lady, and she has also been showing, for some time, an affinity for zebra prints. Zebra prints anything make her happy- clothing, fabric, stuffed animals, earrings, towels, bags, etc. You name it, if it can be printed in zebra, she’s in love.
For her birthday cake this year, I decided to go with this idea of zebra print and have fun with it.
For the cake part, I started with a simple recipe for a butter cake. My recipe happened to be a Martha Stewart recipe, as her cakes always taste spectacular. If you’re a fan of cake mix, I’m sure you could use that too. But basically, it works like this. You start with a white or yellow cake, and then divide the batter in half. To one half, add 2-3 tablespoons of cocoa and mix it in well, so now you have half chocolate, half white cake. Choose a color to start with, and in the bottom of well-greased cake pans, dollop a bit of cake batter. ( I use a 1/4 cup measure for my cakes, but I’ve seen recommendations for a much smaller amount of batter at a time. )
Anyway, drop it right in the middle of the cake pan and allow it to spread a bit. Then, grab a scoop of the other cake batter and drop it right on top of the previous dollop. Now allow this time to settle and spread- but feel free to help it along by banging your cake pan against the counter. Repeat this process over and over. Don’t swirl the pan or shake it at all, just keep dropping circles of cake batter within circles of cake batter.
I actually found a Youtube video of this process for those who are more visually inclined- as I failed to take photos during the process. They used a zipper bag to drop the batter though.
When your cake is cooled, frosted, and stacked, and you cut into it, this is what you end up with:
Abigail absolutely loved her cake. The zebra stripes were easier to do than I expected, and created a really stunning presentation. When I look at this, my mind just spins with the possibilities. You could stripe a cake with any assortment of flavors and colors with this method!
For the outside of the cake I used a new-t0-me product of spray paint for cake. Specifically, Duff Goldman’s Graffiti Spray in blue. I had purchased some zebra striped napkins for the birthday, and I took one of them and very, very painstakingly cut out the black stripes on one of them. Then once I had my cake frosted with a layer of vanilla buttercream, I laid the napkin on top as my template and sprayed away with the blue spray. Blue is currently Abigail’s favorite color.
It turned out well! The blue spray did not add any off-flavors to the cake at all, though the overspray from it was something else. The can did warn me to protect the area I was spraying, but I actually didn’t see any overspray at all. It wasn’t until the next day when I went to wash off the counter that the blue showed up big time. It washed easily with soap and water though.
Overall, an excellent birthday cake, with the result of a very pleased birthday girl.
