Zebra Cake & Muffins

My kids named it B/W SpiderMan Cake. A lovely recipe adapted from Sum's cuisine :)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups Maida
3/4 cup granulated Sugar
1 1/4 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Baking soda
a pinch of Salt
1 cup thick curd
1/2 cup cooking oil
2 tsp Vanilla essence
2 tbsp Coffee decoction (mix 1/2 tsp coffee with 2 tbsp water)
2 tsp Cocoa powder
2 tbsp Milk

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 200˚C. Grease a cake tin or muffin tray and set aside.
Mix the cocoa powder and coffee decoction & set aside.
Powder the sugar & in a bowl, mix the curd and sugar till the sugar dissolves.
Stir-in the baking powder and baking soda into the curd mixture. Mix well and set aside for 2-3 minutes. The curd will turn frothy and start rising and increasing in volume.
In the meanwhile, sieve the flour thrice and set aside.
Add the oil and vanilla essence to the curd mixture. Stir gently so that the air in the mixture is not lost.
Next, gently fold in the flour. Don’t stir very vigorously; do it gently. The batter should have a dropping consistency. If you find batter little thick then add little milk but remember to end with flour.
Divide the batter into 2 equal parts.
To one part of the batter, mix coffee-cocoa mixture and fold to incorporate.
To the other part, mix in 2 tbsp of milk to adjust the consistency.

How to proceed
Place the greased pan on a flat surface.
Pour 1 tbsp of plain batter in the middle of the pan; Without shaking the pan, pour the brown batter over the first.
Repeat with the two batters alternately till the entire batter is used up.
Do not touch the pan in the whole process; the batter will spread by itself & reach the circumference.
Lower the temperature to 180˚C, & bake for 35-40 minutes, till the toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Once done, remove from oven & let the tin cool on a wire-rack for 10 minutes. Run a serrated knife around the edges and upturn the cake from the tin and let it cool on the wire-rack for a good amount of time before you can slice it and enjoy :)

Tips
You can sieve the baking powder & baking soda along with flour (I personally feel this is better way as the batter loses its air if we add them in curds)
I had vanilla yogurt so I used that in place of curds.
Always use curds/yogurt at room temperature.
I reduced the oil by 2 tbsp and still cake turned out good.
If you don't like coffee flavour then omit that and only add cocoa powder in 2 tbsp water.
For Real SpiderMan Cake, omit coffee & cocoa powder and instead use blue colour in one part & red colour in other part. Then just run a toothpick from centre of the batter towards outside to give spider effect.
If using colour always remember to use less first as the colour usually darkens after baking.

You can use more colours and make Rainbow Cake with same recipe.