Choco Banana Zebra Cake

This spring seems to be the season in which I catch up with all the recipes I’ve been meaning to try for months, and in some cases, years. My mother spotted this zebra cake a couple years ago on the food blog AZ Cookbook, and we fell in love with it right away. Why I didn’t do it right away, I don’t know…just laziness, I guess, and also the desire to stay in my baking comfort zones. I changed it up a bit so that I could use up some of the over-ripe bananas we have, and my recipes is on the flip side of the gallery.

If you’ve got an hour to spare, it’s definitely worth a try. The resulting cake is moist and soft, and is the perfect accompaniment to a tea, coffee, or cold milk break.

Ingredients:
2 cups (10 oz / 300 g) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon (equals 3 teaspoons) baking powder (if not available, substitute with 1 teaspoon baking soda)
1/2 tsp salt

Banana Batter
2 eggs
4 oz sugar
1 oz milk
3 oz bananas
1/2 tsp vanilla flavor

Chocolate Batter
2 eggs
4 oz sugar
4 oz milk
4 oz oil
1/2 tsp vanilla flavor
2 TB cocoa

Method:

1. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Sift three times, then divide in two equal parts. In one part, sift in the cocoa, and whisk to combine together.
2. Add plain flour mixture to Banana Cake Batter, and beat in just until well blended (smooth, with no lumps).
3. Add cocoa flour to Chocolate cake Batter, and beat both batters just until well incorporated.  Do NOT over-beat batters. Resulting batters should be the consistency of waffle or pancake batter. If they are too runny, sift in a little more flour and fold in quickly. If they are too thick, add a bit more milk, until the desired consistency is achieved.
4. Preheat oven to 350 F.
5. Using two ladles, drop batter into center of 9-inch baking pan. Alternate placing of batter, one over the other, staying in the center so that you see rings of chocolate and banana batter pushing outwards.
6. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until toothpick inserted into toothpick comes out clean.
7. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack, right side up, for a few hours. Dust with powdered sugar, and slice into wedges for serving.

For Banana Cake Batter:

1. Beat eggs with sugar until light cream in color and fluffy.
2. Puree banana with milk; you can alter the ratio to make it more liquidy, just make sure you use no more than 4 oz of the resulting liquid in the batter. Beat puree, oil and vanilla into egg mixture.

For Chocolate Cake Batter:

1. Beat eggs with sugar until light cream in color and fluffy.
2. Beat milk, oil and vanilla into egg mixture.