zebra cupcakes

August 14th, 2008 by justJENN

This cake is a stunner, the layered lines are gorgeous inside – but man, it takes some dedication. I used teaspoonfulls of batter to make each one. Do you know how many teaspoons are in a cupcake? TOO FREAKIN’ MANY. Totally worth it though!

ingredients:
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla
2-1/2 cups cake flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup whole milk

2 heaping Tbsp. valrhona cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep a cupcake pan with liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Carefully add the eggs one at a time until incorporated, then add the vanilla. Alternate the milk and the dry ingredients.

Once the batter has come together, separate it evenly into two bowls. Add the cocoa powder into one of the bowls and stir until you get a nice brown chocolatey color.

Here comes the tough part. If you want a lot of lines, a nice complex interior when you cut into it, then do what I do and use a teaspoon. It’s tedious almost to the point of painful, but the payoff is worth it.

Put one teaspoonful of plain batter in the middle of the cup. Then one teaspoonful of the cocoa batter right in the center on top of the plain batter. Don’t jiggle or tilt the pan, just let the batter spread by itself. Keep doing this until you get 3/4 of the way full. Believe me, it’ll take a while.

Bake approx 15 minutes depending on your oven. Do a toothpick check, and let the cupcakes cool on a wire rack. I like to frost this with a mocha frosting. When you cut into the cake you should get nice stripey stripes, if all went well. It’s quite pretty, definitely takes more effort than your average cupcake, but so worth it!