Striped biscuit "Zebra" - a recipe that is unusually popular in many countries. This baking always looks very impressive, has a delicate taste with a chocolate touch, and making desserts based on this recipe is much easier than it might seem.
Sponge cakes can become the basis for a regular everyday tea cake, or they can turn into a holiday cake. It's all about the design and the used additions (creams, impregnations, glazes, ganache). Moreover, based on the recipe proposed in our article, you can also make wonderful cupcakes.
Essential Ingredients
First of all, we will prepare the products from which our Zebra biscuit will be prepared. The recipe with the photo will help you to make sure that there is nothing complicated in the preparation. It is better to remove all components from the refrigerator in advance so that they warm up to room temperature.
We will need the following:
- sour cream - 200 ml;
- chicken egg - 3 pcs.;
- flour (sifted) - 2 tbsp .;
- soda - 1 tsp;
- margarine, butter or spread - 50 g;
- sugar - 1 tbsp .;
- cocoa - 2-3 tbsp. l
Do not forget about fat to lubricate the form. The oil in the spray is ideal for this purpose.
Cooking sponge cake step by step
It is believed that for the preparation of any biscuit dough , the dough mixer is best suited. The zebra sponge cake is no exception.
The recipe with a photo step by step at home will help you if you do not have such a technique. You can use a regular mixer or even whisk components manually using a whisk.
- First of all, we need to thoroughly beat the eggs with sugar. This will create a gentle airy foundation for our future biscuit. You will not be able to achieve stable peaks, because we use whole eggs, not proteins, but the mass should become quite uniform and light, and in addition, increase in volume.
- If the sour cream that you use is not too greasy and sour, you can add soda directly to it. There will be enough acid. Otherwise, pre-extinguish soda with vinegar or lemon juice.
- Add sour cream, melted butter, flour to the beaten eggs. Divide the dough into two parts.
- Add cocoa to one part and mix thoroughly.
Mold fill
Each “Zebra” biscuit, the recipe of which we offer in this article, can be adjusted to your taste. Which stripes do you like most: very thin, elegant or expressive and clear? Decide on this point in advance, because the result will depend on subsequent actions.
If you want thin strips, pour the dough a little, literally one tablespoon and each time in the same place. Spreading, the layers themselves will fall as they should, as a result of which you will form a pattern with very thin lines. If you prefer large strips, alternately pour light and dark dough with a ladle.
Regardless of the thickness of the strips, you need to bake a biscuit in an oven preheated to 180 ° C for about 40 minutes. Do not rush to get ready cake! Let it stand in the oven for another half hour.
Biscuit decoration
On what occasion did you decide to make a Zebra biscuit? The recipe with the photo proposed in this article is suitable for different dishes. It can be a regular everyday tea cake. It can be decorated with a sprinkle of cocoa, icing sugar, glaze, berries. A little tip: to sprinkle down evenly, apply it not from a pack, but with a small sieve, spraying it on the surface.
Holiday cakes
This recipe is also suitable for baking on the occasion of a celebration. Cakes in which the idea of bands is supported by the external design also look original. You can use two types of ganache (from white and black chocolate), as well as colored mastic. If you are working with velor, use a stencil.
Zebra with colored stripes
For a children's holiday, you can cook a not quite ordinary zebra biscuit. The recipe, already known to you, is suitable for color cake.
Thick creamy dough should not be divided into two, but into three parts, one should be left light, the other should be tinted with cocoa, and a few drops of confectionery dye should be added to the third. For this test you need to choose dyes on a fat-soluble basis.
Unusual recipe: black and white "Zebra"
If you want to cook a black-and-white biscuit "Zebra", the recipe proposed below will certainly interest you. It is useful, for example, if you are preparing a treat for a theme party in the style of Safari. Agree, a real zebra is not beige-brown at all, but it is black and white.
In the bright half of the dough, add a few drops of titanium dioxide (this is a safe food coloring, with which the confectioners get a steady white shade). Getting black is harder. It is simply impossible to get cuttlefish ink in a regular store, and their price is quite high. A gel colorant, for example, AmeriColor, which uniformly paints the dough in a saturated shade, can come to the rescue. Such a biscuit is baked in the same way as an ordinary, but it looks very impressive and unusual.