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

Update: from October 15th....I know I'm late but just had to say that the cake turned out beautifully. I was beside myself as it was spilling over the side but that was my fault from over filling the pan. My daughter loved her cake and can't wait for us to make another. Thank you for the tutorial. This made her cake something to remember!

That's wonderful, thanks for letting us know!!

Krysten, I am so happy to hear that!! I'm glad that you could make something special (and so much fun) for your daughter! Thanks for the update!

I am making this Friday for my daughters Bday party and need to know what size of cake pans you need to use as well as if you can add a touch of black Wilton icing color to the brown cake mix to make the stripes darker?
Need ideas and help asap as I will only get one chance at this due to time constraints. Thanks!

Hi Saby, we used 8 inch pans but you an adjust as needed. There's no harm in adding coloring gel to the batter. It would take a good amount of gel to achieve black...but if you are going for a black/brown shade, that would be fine! (You can always get an idea by putting a drop of black into a spoonful of batter.) --

Good luck!

Hello! Would you do the same thing for cupcakes, or do you have another trick for that? Thanks!

Thank you Melissa, I will use the 8 inch pans then and give adding a little black to the batter and see if that helps to darken it up a bit. I am excited about trying this. Oh, if you have some batter left how full are you filling the pans? half full? Wonder if I used bigger pans if I could use all the batter without it overflowing.

Hi Saby, we filled our pans about 2/3's full. I'm sorry, I can't remember how much batter we had left over.

I don't know what I did wrong but both layers fell and crumbled apart especially when I went to put icing on them. So disappointing

Hi Danielle--I'm sorry that you had this problem! Could you tell if the pattern was right? If the only issue here was the crumbling, it could simply be due to the softness of the cake. If your icing was very thick or a stiff consistency, that call also tear your cake. You want it to be soft enough to easily glide on.

I almost always wrap my cake layers in plastic wrap and then foil while they are still ever so slightly warm. Then, I frost them with a crumb coat (very thin coat) when they are partially frozen...and then allow the cake to settle and reach room temp before applying the final coat. Partially frozen layers are much stronger & less likely to crumble.

Don't give up! I think you'll have better luck next time!