Chocolate Orange Zebra Cake

I found a new (to me) blog that I enjoyed reading today. The author is vegetarian and, in addition to making some delicious looking Indian food, does a lot of beautiful baking. Like this, and this, and this...you get the idea. It rained all day today, so I seized upon the opportunity to throw open the windows and celebrate the 78 degree weather (with a breeze!) by baking a cake. This cake, to be exact. I had serious doubts about whether I could pull off the zebra effect, but was too fascinated not to try. While mine definitely does not look as nice as hers (or this one!), I was pretty happy with the results.



I ran out of cocoa, so the chocolate isn't as dark as I would have liked it to be. I definitely need to find some really dark cocoa and try again. It might also be tasty to layer vanilla and orange for a creamsicle cake, though the zebra effect would be much more subtle. I'm thinking that these cakes would be perfect holiday gifts. I could use my 4" or 6" cake pans, wrap the results in butcher paper and give them away in little tins. This one was really dense and moist, so I imagine that it will keep nicely for several days. I put half of it in the freezer--I'll let you know how it tastes thawed out next week.