My Gluten/Dairy Free Zebra Cake

First of all I feel I should acknowledge where I got the basic recipe that I modified to make this cake. http://amandainpitt.livejournal.com/6935.html I found this website while looking for a gluten free white cake recipe. It seemed to me that a Zebra cake is made from white cake with cocoa powder mixed into half the batter. I feel I have to add that while this cake turned out fine it did not work as a traditional Zebra cake with vertical stripes. The batter was still much to thick for that. However, I did layer it and ended up with horizontal stripes. This being my first attempt at a zebra cake I feel it was a fair attempt. My 6 and 4 year old boys really liked it. The flavoring was good. I am going to try to come up with a less thick cake recipe to try this again. For now this is what I came up with.

Here goes:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Rice Flour (her recipe calls for white rice, I used brown rice since I had that on hand, you could also try sweet rice flour)

1/2 cup Sorghum Flour

2/3 cup Tapioca Flour

1/3 cup Potato Starch Flour

1 cup White Cane Sugar

2 teaspoons Baking Soda

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1 teaspoon Xanthan Gum

3/4 cup Shortening plus 4 tablespoons Water (she used softened butter or margarine)

3 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla

1/2 cup + 4 Tablespoons milk-any type (I used rice milk)

2 teaspoons oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 10 inch round pan or a 9 inch square pan. I also dusted my pan with rice flour to keep the cake from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Worked like a dream.

Combine the first 8 dry ingredients in a separate bowl.

Place shortening and water in a mixer bowl and beat until creamy. Add dry ingredient mix to shortening on lowest setting until combined. Your mixture will be crumbly, about 1 minute.

In small bowl, lightly whisk eggs and vanilla together. Add eggs to mixer and mix until smooth and thick, about 1 minute. Add milk and mix for 1 minute.

Now take half of your batter and pour into a separate bowl. Add to this:

1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 Tablespoons milk

What I did for layering my Zebra Cake. Since it wasn't runny enough to spread out, I decided to make several mounds of alternating chocolate and white cake mix. In the center I started with a tablespoon of white cake, then alternated between white cake and chocolate cake mix around it. Using a tablespoon at a time, layer white on top of chocolate and chocolate on top of white until you use all the batter.

Here is what mine looked like:

Ok, so I know this does not look pretty. I had already tried the traditional method for making a Zebra cake and my center mound just wasn't spreading out. What to do? So I decided to do six other mounds around it. The bottom layers alternating from white cake to chocolate. I also could have used a slightly bigger pan for this. My 10 inch spring form pan would have been better.
The batter was thick and I had a hard time spooning it on a tablespoon at a time. So this isn't going to be pretty from the top view. Maybe you will have better luck. In the end the layers did smooth out a bit so that they mounts would have made a fairly smooth top (If my pan had been bigger).

Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes. Allow to cool in pan for about 10 minutes. Finish cooling on wire rack. Frost when cool (though this does not need frosting).

Here is how mine looked when cut into: