We are truly spoilt for good cooking programmes at the moment now that The Great British Bake Off and Lorraine Pascale have returned to our screens! Hurrah!
During Lorraine’s first show she made a fabulous stripy cake called a Crouching Tiger Hidden Zebra Cake! The results were really impressive and yet it looked like it would be a nice easy cake to make. I fancied trying something a bit different this weekend but still wanted a classic wedge of cake to enjoy with a cup of tea – this one seemed to tick all the boxes.
This is a liquid cake which is made using sunflower oil instead of butter, plus sugar, vanilla and eggs. The mix is then split into two portions and SR flour is added to one to make the vanilla cake. SR flour, cocoa powder and orange zest are added to the other bowl to make a chocolate orange cake. The two cake mixes are then alternately dolloped, tablespoon by tablespoon, into the cake tin to make a kind of target pattern until all the mixtures have been used up. This is what creates the fabulous vertical stripes when you then cut into the cake.
My cake took around 50 minutes to bake on 160C (recipe recommends 35 minutes but mine was still wetter in the middle). I topped it with a chocolate orange buttercream and drizzles of melted white chocolate. The cake isn’t dry but I do think it benefits from a frosting or buttercream. It also makes it a nice surprise when you cut into the cake to reveal the stripes! If you didn’t want to ice it, you could perhaps serve it with cream instead.
The recipe isn’t available online at the moment but is available in Lorraine’s new Fast Fresh and Easy book. It was featured on the first episode of the TV series but if you follow that recipe please note: THE RECIPE USES 300G SR FLOUR IN TOTAL. The TV series makes it look like 175g of flour is added to the mixture before it is split in two, and then additional measures of flour added – this is a bit misleading!
I’m going to try this technique with some other flavours in the future – it really does look great and is well worth a go!
PiggyBakes 