Lorraine Pascale's Chocolate and Vanilla Zebra Cake

Ingredients

250ml sunflower (or other flavourless) oil, plus extra for greasing

250g caster sugar

100ml semi-skimmed milk

4 medium eggs or 3 large (at room temperature)

A few drops of vanilla extract

300g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

25g cocoa powder

23cm loose bottom cake tin or a spring form tin

2 medium size bowls

2 icing bags or if you prefer spoons

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 180, fan 160 or gas mark 4

Grease the bottom of your cake tin with a little oil and line with baking parchment and then add a tiny amount of oil again and set aside

Add to one bowl the oil, sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla extract and mix well. Do not use a whisk or electric whisk as it gets to much air into the mixture which with this type of cake we don’t want

Pour out half of the mixture into a separate bowl then in one of the bowls sift 175g of self raising flour, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder and combine.

In the other bowl sift the remaining 125g of flour 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder and the 25g of cocoa powder and mix well

If using piping bags fill each one with each mixture and cut a very small end off. This was my first attempt at piping so I made rather a mess! Next time I will use the spoons!

Pipe/spoon one circle in the centre of the vanilla mix, then add on top a spoonful of chocolate mix and keep going until all the mixture is used. You will see the mix start to push further out and have a stripey look. Don’t panic if goes a bit off. As this was my first time making it and piping I ended up with 2 separate stripes but cake still turned out the same

Bake in the oven for approx 35 mins. I check at around 30. To check if baked add a skewer to the middle and if it comes out clean it’s done or press gently the centre of the cake, if it springs back it’s ready

Leave in the tin for 5 mins to cool slightly then carefully remove from the tin and put onto a cooling rack

Cut the cake into 8 slices and serve