How to Make a Cake with Zebra Stripes on the Inside!

Today I'm going to demonstrate how to make a cake with zebra stripes on the inside! This is such a fantastic surprise-inside cake and a fun alternative to a traditional chocolate and vanilla marbled cake.

By the way, I did not invent the zebra cake. I'm not sure who did--but if you google zebra cakes, you'll see all kinds of recipes that point to basically the same outcome--very cool looking zebra slices! You'll see that part in just a second.

First, let's talk batter-- You'll most often see chocolate and white zebra cakes, but for a fun twist, you can tint your batter with coloring gels to create all sorts of unique combinations of colorful stripes!

We went the boxed cake route and bought a box of Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake, and a box of Duncan Hines French Vanilla. We chose these because they don't have pudding in the mix (like Pillsbury & Betty Crocker, which can be a little thick for this project--although I love them for anything else).

We prepared the batter for each cake mix separately and found the batter to be just the right consistency. If the batter is too thick, the effect will be more difficult to achieve. If they batter is very thin, it may spread too quickly.

(*** If you would like to try this cake with a scratch recipe, you can choose your favorite white or yellow cake recipe and then divide it approx. in half-- you can stir approximately 3 tablespoons or so of dutch processed cocoa powder into one of your bowls of batter to create chocolate batter.

Now, let's make a zebra cake!

We started with our two bowls of cake batter....

Then, we poured ¼ cup of vanilla batter into the middle of our 8" pan. It will spread a little bit. Then...

Measure out a ¼ cup of chocolate batter and pour it in the center of your vanilla batter.

Repeat this process, continuing with ¼ cup scoops of alternating flavors, each flavor of batter dropped into the center of the previous circle of batter. The batter is thin enough that it does not take long at all for the batter to spread and push out a little bit.

Continue the process until your pans are approximately ⅔ full. (We had a couple of cups leftover, which we used to make extra cake layers for another time.)

Look how pretty!...

This beautiful striped batter is ready for the oven!

Well...here's where it would have been nice of me to take a picture of the baked layers. They look exactly like the above picture, only...baked. :0)

I assembled my fat two layer cake as I always do...the bottom layer right side up, and the top layer top side down (with buttercream in between). I'm sure that the zebra effect would look pretty no matter how you stack your layers.

After crumb coating my cake with vanilla buttercream, I used a Wilton star tip 21 (one of my faves) to do a reverse shell pattern with my medium consistency buttercream.

I always love a nice reverse shell border, but I now like them even better when piped vertically!

You can see that I staggered mine a bit so that neighboring lines fit nicely together. Is it just me or does my cake look like it's wearing a snuggly buttercream sweater?! (Find out more about reverse shell borders in our tutorial on How to Pipe with a Star Tip!)

Okay, time for the big reveal! (I said a little prayer after all of that piping that the zebra stripes actually would be there when we cut into the cake!)

Whew! It worked! I couldn't be happier with the outcome. I LOVE these zebra print cake layers!

It's always nice to have a hidden surprise inside of the cake! If you haven't tried this method already, make sure to put it on your cake "bucket list". It's so much fun, and looks much more complicated than it actually is, which I love!

*An update~ When this tutorial was first created, the sizes of standard box mixes were larger (around 18.5 oz). Now, they are 16.5 oz. We tested the zebra cake again with the new smaller size and still had great results.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope that you enjoyed the tutorial!

Did you know that we also have a leopard print (on the inside) cake video tutorial? It's one of our favorites! Leopard Print Cake Tutorial

Or if you are just looking for a good old fashioned Marble Cake recipe, we have just the one! It's good to have options!

371 Comments

can i use food coloring instead of using chocolate batter

Yes, that will be fine.

Melissa I haven't read all of the comments on this cake tutorial so you may have already been asked this question. I made the cake, thought I followed the directions exactly but when the cake was baked and cut it looked more like a plain marble cake rather than stripes. Could you give any advise on what I may have done wrong? They only thing I could think of is maybe I filled the pan too full and it changed the striped design as it rose in baking?

Hello I will be having a quinceneara soon and my dress is hot pink and zebra so i thoght itwould be great to serve this cake to the qu,ests but instead of having white batter, i want it pink but i dont know how to make the white pink or where i could buy the tint. Please help me !

@Shirley--I'm sorry that it didn't turn out for you! I'm not sure what could have happened. Did the batter seem too thick or too thin? When you say that the pans were really full, did the dark and white rings seem closer together than mine? Or were your stripes just thicker because you added more batter at a time than I did?

The main rule that I stuck to when doing this cake was to let the batter sink down on it's own...no tapping the pan on the counter, etc. to speed up the process for fear that things would become distorted.

Maybe I'll try this cake again this week to see if I still get a good result-- the cake mix companies have changed the size of their boxes since this post was made, and although the instructions on the back are the same, I'd like to give it a try with the 15.25 oz mixes to be sure.

@America--You can find coloring gels at most craft stores that sell cake decorating supplies (for instance, Michael's, AC Moore, Hobby Lobby). You can also order the coloring gels online.

I tried this last night, just playing around I used classic white and dark choc fudge duncan hines. I also just used a 6" pan. Anyway I think the design would have come out nicer in a bigger pan, I was using the 1/4 cup for each batter, just not sure how thin the batter should have been. I reduced the water in each (those cakes mixes are not the same amounts so I guessed.) It was spreading but was a bit thick. I guess you just have to find the right consistency to make it work. Guess I'll be baking lots of cakes. Maybe I should make your flavors and water amount and see what the consistency of the batter is then try the flavors I want.

@Melissa - Thanks for the help! :) You just made my day easier and less stressfully.

Can you do this design in character cake pan?

I made your WASC cake this past weekend and it was delicious. My question is do you think that recipe consistency would work for this technique? Not sure if that batter would be too thick or thin for this? I would like to use that recipe since so many people loved the taste.