Red White & Blue Zebra Bundt Cake with Cherry Glaze for Memorial Day

There inevitably will be a party or barbecue this weekend so I made this to be armed and ready for an impromptu invite. I've been wanting to make a zebra bundt cake for a while and never made one with three colors so this was my personal Memorial Day weekend baking challenge.

This jewel of a vintage cookbook was given to me by my mother. There are so many cute old fashioned ideas in it. I looked up a white cake recipe that seemed perfect.

To create the zebra effect I am going to point you over to Naomi's blog Baker's Royale. She has a perfect tutorial. She uses two colors in her post but I found adding one more was just as easy. It did not come out so perfectly zebra (due to my sloppiness, not her instructions) but I think it looks festive enough to serve anyway.

The cake recipe itself is quite tasty and the cherry flavor in the icing added a bit of extra flavor.

Red White & Blue Zebra Bundt Cake

 with Cherry Glaze

For the White Cake:

(Adapted from Fluffy White Cake from Betty Crocker's New Picture Cookbook
 McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1961 General Mills, Inc.)


Ingredients:

• 2+1/2 cups AP flour sifted
• 2+1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1+1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1+1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 egg whites whipped until stiff

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Grease and flour a bundt pan.
• Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
• Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy.
• Add vanilla extract.
• Add milk and flour mixture alternating each until mixed throughly.
• Fold in Egg whites.

Make the zebra cake:

• Divide the cake batter into three equal portions.
• Using paste food coloring dye one portion red and another blue.

• Starting with the red batter, place three tablespoons of batter into the bundt pan.

• Add three more tablespoons of the white batter directly on top of the red and repeat with the blue.

• Repeat until all the batter in gone. The batter will spread out so keep adding the tablespoons of batter on top of one another in the same spot.

• Bake for 30 minutes or until a cake tester or knife inserted into the cake comes out dry.

• Let cool completely in pan before removing and place on a wire rack.

For the Cherry Glaze:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of powdered sugar, sifted
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon cherry extract*
• Red and blue non pareils,  sprinkles or glittered sugar.

Directions:

• Place parchment or waxed paper until the rack the cake is resting on.
• Whisk everything together until smooth.
• Pour the glaze over the cake.
• Sprinkle the decorations on.
• Let glaze dry completely before cutting the cake.

*The cherry extract  gave the icing a slight pink tinge so I added white food coloring to lighten it back to white.