Zebra Cake, Using Two Half Boxes of Mix

Last month, I wrote up "Zebra Cake, Using Marble Cake Mix", which differs from this zebra cake only slightly. While the marble cake method has the convenience of using one box of cake mix (marble), the two-half-box method provides flexibility in varying flavors and brands. Try different varieties of chocolate (fudgy, devil's food, …) and lighter color cake (white, yellow, vanilla).
My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. ingredients
2. equipment
3. preparing pans (spray oil with parchment paper)
4. separate bowls for chocolate and white cake mixes
5. mixing of wet ingredients
6. mixing of white cake batter
7. mixing of chocolate cake batter
8. start of dispensing of batters into the pans, alternating colors
9. batters in pans, kitchen scale
10. baked cakes
11. parchment paper removal
12. frosted cake with slice showing zebra effect

Ingredients

• 1/2 box chocolatey cake mix (I used Duncan Hines Devil's Food.)
• 1/2 box lighter color cake mix (I used Duncan Hines Classic White.)
• 2 egg yolks
• 3 egg whites
• 3/8 C cooking oil
• 1 1/8 C water
• spray oil
• frosting of your choice (I used mocha frosting. Scroll down for EZ instructions.)

Implements

• electric mixer
• 3 mixing bowls, 1 for mixing wet ingredients, the other two for mixing the batters
• 2 round cake pans
• cooling rack(s)
• measuring cups
• rubber spatula(s)
• 2 1/4-cup measuring cups for dispensing different color batters
• measuring cup or pitcher that holds more than two cups

Additional (straggler) items

• parchment paper as desired
• knife for spreading frosting
• cake plate

Instructions (Have the cake mix box handy! And watch the YouTube video for more details.)

1. Prepare baking pans. (I used parchment paper and cooking spray.)
2. Pour the cake powders into separate bowls.
3. In the third mixing bowl, mix the wet ingredients together, then measure. (Mine measured about 2 cups.)
4. Pour half of the liquid into the lighter color cake powder, then mix (about 30 seconds on low, then 2 minutes on medium).
5. Preheat the oven (350°).
6. Pour the other half of the liquid into the chocolatey cake powder, then mix (about 30 seconds on low, then 2 minutes on medium).
7. Use the two 1/4 C measuring cups to alternate pouring light and dark batters into the two pans. (Afterward, if desired, weigh the two filled pans to confirm the amounts are close to equal. Adjust as desired.)
8. Bake for about 24 minutes. YMMV
9. Test cake(s) for doneness with toothpick.
10. Remove the pans of cake and place on cooling rack(s) for about 15 minutes for cooling.
11. Decorate as fancy as you wish. Conventional, not-too-fussy decorating is as follows:
    1. Place one layer upside down on a plate and decorate the exposed side
    2. Place the other layer right side up on the first layer.
    3. Frost the sides.
    4. Frost the top.

Mocha frosting:
o 1/2 can white frosting
o 1/2 can choco frosting
o 2 tsp instant coffee dissolved in 1 tsp just-boiled water or just-brewed coffee

If necessary, microwave the frostings a few seconds for stirrability, then stir all ingredients together.

Post-recipe Thoughts
This two-half-box method for zebra cake yielded only slightly less batter than the marble-cake method, but final cakes looked and tasted similar. (I'm not a pro.) For the marble-cake method, the wet ingredients were 3 eggs, 1 cup water, and 1/3 cup oil; baking time was two minutes shorter. Anyway, for future zebra cakes, I need to improve my aim in pouring batters in concentric circles.

Zebra Cake, Using Marble Cake Mix

I'd been intrigued by a cute Duff zebra cake mix. (Love those stripes!) But it was so much more expensive than household names like Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines, and Pillsbury. In googling"zebra cake", I found a wealth of resources—especially how to create the stripey effect.

A particularly easy, non-Duff way to make a yummy zebra cake with using only one box of mix is getting marble cake mix. My store carried marble cake mix from only Duncan Hines. Surprisingly, Pillabury and Betty Crocker seem to have ceded the marble cake market to Duncan Hines, as googling those mix products indicates.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. ingredients
2. equipment
3. prepared pans (spray oil with parchment paper)
4. mixed cake batter, pre-cocoa powder
5. scooping of 2 C batter into another bowl
6. mixing of chocolate cake batter
7. dispensing of batters into the pans, alternating colors
8. baked cakes
9. parchment paper removal
10. frosted cake
11. frosted cake with slice showing zebra effect

Ingredients

• 1 box marble cake mix
• ingredients for recipe, using the box info for guide
  • eggs
  • cooking oil
  • water
• spray oil
• frosting of your choice

Implements

• mixing bowls
• measuring cups for oil and water
• 1/4 C measuring cups for dispensing different color batters
• rubber spatula(s)
• electric mixer
• 2 round cake pans
• cooling rack(s)

Additional (straggler) items

• parchment paper as desired
• knife for spreading frosting
• cake plate

Instructions (Have the cake mix box handy! And watch the YouTube video for more details.)

1. Preheat the oven (350°).
2. Prepare baking pans. (I used parchment paper and cooking spray.)
3. Prepare the batter as instructed on the box, up till blending in the cocoa powder. (I mixed wet ingredients, then mixed in the cake mix powder.)
4. Pour 2 C of the batter into a smaller bowl.
5. In the bowl of remaining batter, pour the cocoa powder and blend together.
6. Use the two 1/4 C measuring cups to alternate pouring light and dark batters into the two pans. (Afterward, if desired, weigh the two filled pans to confirm the amounts are close to equal. Adjust as desired.)
7. Bake for about 22 minutes. YMMV
8. Test cake(s) for doneness with toothpick.
9. Remove the pans of cake and place on cooling rack(s) for about 15 minutes for cooling.
10. Decorate as fancy as you wish. Conventional, not-too-fussy decorating is as follows:
    1. Place one layer upside down on a plate and decorate the exposed side
    2. Place the other layer right side up on the first layer.
    3. Frost the sides.
    4. Frost the top.

Post-recipe Thoughts
Seems I wound up with slightly more chocolatey batter than white batter. Maybe next time I'd set aside slightly more of the lighter color cake batter. Maybe the cocoa powder wound up adding more bulk to the chocolate batter than I anticipated.

November 19, 2016: Visit "Zebra Cake, Using Two Half Boxes of Mix" for another zebra cake methodology. It requires only slightly more effort, but has a lot more flexibility for flavors and brands.

Minty Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies

My previous recipe (Choco Cranberry Sauce Cake Mix Cupcakes) used cake mix powder that I sifted white and chocolate flavors together, using half of the mixture. This recipe uses the other half of the powder. My cooky recipes are almost all about using cake mixes because of convenience. Using cake mix in cooky making is more complex than using refrigerated cooky dough, but easier than blending soft butter into cooky powder mix. Furthermore, cake mixes come in more varieties and provide more options for the imagination.

Winter time seems to bring out inclinations for something minty. Do something different than chocolate chip cookies—make the chips mint! One year, I found mint-green chips, which I haven't seen lately. This year, I ran across Andes Creme de Menthe baking chips, which have chocolate and mint-green stripes. Did not know until now that Tootsie owns Andes.

Note: Both Tootsie and Amazon offer up Andes Creme de Menthe baking chips, but their prices are WAY more expensive than the local supermarket price.

Besides using chips with varying mint strengths, have the dough flavors meet in the middle—half vanilla-ey and half chocolatey. If you'd rather not commit to buying one box each of white and chocolate mixes, buy a marble cake mix and mix the powders together. My recipe for Diff Kinda Choco-chip Cake Mix Cookies includes marble cake mix, chocolate chips, and coconut.

Onto the recipe details!

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Combo pic:
   1. Mixed eggs and oil
   2. Mixture of eggs, oil, and cake mix
   3. Dough, with chips stirred in
4. Raw dough in pan
5. Baked cookies in pan
6. Flipped cookies on a cooling rack
7. Cooled cookies on a plate

Implements

• Cooky pan(s)
• Pastry blender
• Mixing bowl
• Measuring cup
• Spoon for measuring out cooky dough
• Spatula for scraping dough onto pan
• Cooky spatula to lift and transfer baked cookies (not shown—forgot for preprep pic)
• Cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 box chocolatey cake mix (I used half fudgy chocolate and half white.)
• 5 oz mint chips (I used Andes Creme de Menthe baking chips.)
• 5 oz chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine the oil and eggs.
3. Use the pastry blender to stir the cake mix powder into the wet ingredients.
4. Stir the chips into the dough. (I might have saved a little energy if I had combined both kinds of chip together first.)
5. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
6. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet. (For slightly flatter cookies, slightly flatten the shaped dough rounds with the measuring cup.)
7. Bake for about 9 to 10 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
8. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

The yield was 57 cookies, amounting to ~65 calories each. YMMV

Recipe Deviation Suggestions
If trying out this recipe, advanced deviations include the following modifications:

• If you want to buy only one box of cake mix instead of two for making up half chocolatey and half white dough. buy marble cake mix and sift the powders together.
• For more mintiness, use all mint chips instead of half mint and half chocolate chips. If you want to be really gutsy, you can add some mint extract into the wet ingredients before mixing the powders in.

Diff Kinda Choco-chip Cake Mix Cookies

Last month, I published the PC cake mix cookies recipe—featuring pecans and coconut, and using French Vanilla cake mix as the dry ingredient base. This time, I thought about a familiar, yet different cooky recipe, using my standard cake mix recipe. One variation of chocolate chip cookies is using half white cake mix and half fudge or chocolate cake mix.

In the distant past, I used to buy Jiffy Cake Mix, one white and one chocolate, and mix them together. (Each Jiffy box holds 9 ounces of powder, about half the amount of regular cake mix.) The Jiffy website alludes to less availability of their products in stores than the company prefers, although it does have a webpage for online shopping.

Hmm, the cartoon carton reminds me of Justin Timberlake in the SNL Veganville skit, looking like a pink brick of tofu. Anyway, as my supermarket did not carry Jiffy cake mixes, I thought I might buy one of each full-size mixes, weigh, mix half and half, and save the other halves for something in the future.

I spotted Duncan Hines' marble cake mix and decided to buy that powder instead—one box of mix instead of two. The box contains one main sack of white cake mix and a small pouch of chocolate powder mixture.

My pixstrip shows the ingredients on the left (powder mixes, coconut, chocolate chips, eggs, oil), baked cookies in the middle, and cooled and stacked cookies on the right.

Implements

• cooky pan(s)
• pastry blender
• medium-large mixing bowl
• small mixing bowl or large cup or jar (for eggs and oil)
• measuring cup
• measuring spoons
• cooky spatula to lift and transfer baked cookies
• cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 C cooking oil (I replaced 1 T with sesame oil.)
• 1 18ish oz. marble cake mix (I used Duncan HInes brand.)
• 1 C flaked coconut (I broke up the bigger, stuck clumps.)
• 1 C chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour the coconut into a medium-large mixing bowl, breaking up the lumps.
3. Pour the cake mix white cake and chocolate powders into the coconut, using the pastry blender to blend together.
4. In a bowl or large cup, combine the oil and eggs. For a more aromatic flavor, exchange 1 T of the oil with 1 T sesame oil.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the larger bowl and use a pastry blender to stir the ingredients together.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips.
7. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
8. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet. Slightly press the lumps with the bottom of the measuring cup for flatter cookies. OK, be lazier and press down with palm or fingers together.
9. Bake for about 10 to 11 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
10. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack. These cookies don't actually require much coaxing to loosen them from the pan.

Shaping the dough slightly concave yielded 52 cookies, same number as the pecan coconut cookies. The calories amount is a bit more—78 for these, 82 for the PCs. However, 4 calories per cooky difference isn't a lot to fuss about.

The following table shows the effect of including or excluding chips, coconut, or both. Note that omitting both chips and coconut result in the grand calorie savings of 25 per cookie. Can you stop at one?

Ingredient, calories	Version
	A	B	C	D
cake mix powders, 2040	✔	✔	✔	✔
2 eggs, 140	✔	✔	✔	✔
1/3 C oil, 533	✔	✔	✔	✔
1 C coconut, 560	✔	✔	—	—
1 C chocolate chips, 800	✔	—	✔	—
batch (52), total calories	4073	3273	3513	2713
calories per cookie	~78	~62	~68	~52

One closing remark about this cooky recipe—the coconut didn't come through as prominently as I expected. A redo with adding coconut extract might enhance it more. Maybe fuggetabout coconut altogether.

Additional Past Cooky Recipes

• PC Cookies (pecans and coconut as featured add-ins)
• Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies
• Cake Mix Macaroon Cookies (similar recipe with more process details, using fewer dry ingredients and more wet ingredients
• A Convenient Triple-dose Pnutty Butter Cooky Batch
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--German Chocochip Bites
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch [Valentine]