Zebra/Leopard/Marble Cake ~ My Adorable Small Town Life

I can't remember where I first saw zebra cake posted, but I do remember how fun and easy it looked to make. It had the zebra name because it was chocolate and vanilla cake baked together to look like the stripes of a zebra. I made one for fun a few months ago and I'm a sucker for any sort of surprise-inside cake, so I liked it. This time around I wanted to add some colour to it (pink!), which ended up looking like leopard print to me. I'm sure this cake could also be called marble too. Whatever you want to call it, it is a fun and tasty cake to bake.

Ingredients:
1 box white or yellow cake mix, prepared as per package directions.
(sidenote: I always prepare cake mix with unsweetened applesauce instead of oil. It makes
for a flavourful cake that has way less fat).
2 tbs cocoa powder
Food colour of choice (if desired)

Method:
1. Prepare cake batter and separate into two bowls. A box of cake mix will make roughly 5 cups, so I very roughly measured out 2.5 cups into a new bowl.

2. Add 2 tbs of cocoa powder to one bowl and stir to combine. Add food colouring to other bowl and stir to combine (or leave white if you want the zebra look).

3. Using a 1/4 cup measure, alternate batter into the center of greased cake pans. Just keep adding the batter to the center and gravity and the baking process will spread it all out for you. Check out this brief kitchen video I made that shows me alternating the colours:

4. Bake cake in 350°F oven. I used 8 inch round cake pans and the box suggested 26-31 minutes, but it actually took a little longer (about 38 min). I just kept checking every 3-5 minutes to see if a toothpick would come out clean. It finally did.

5. Frost and decorate to taste. I used a white frosting so that the inside would seem more surprising when cut open. The frosting I used was marshmallow buttercream (my favourite).

Once the cake was iced white I noticed I still had some buttercream leftover, so I added 1 tsp of cocoa powder to it and piped some designs along the top and bottom. Fancy eh?