Over the top zebra cakes. Ready to ship.

My niece called me a few weeks ago and asked for a zebra cake, and I plan to do everything possible to never tell that child no. Making a zebra themed cake for local delivery is no problem. But Sofia lives about a thousand miles away and the thought of trying to ship a decorated cake wasn't too appealing.  So I made her jarcakes.

I've seen zebra stripe cakes made by layering two colors of batter in the pan, adding each color in the center right over the last layer. Since I wanted to make the zebra stripes in jarcakes for easy shipping, I used the same technique but piped the batter in to keep it from getting all over the place. I braced myself for a huge mess, but it really wasn't bad.  iping each color into the center was easy - the colors don't need to be perfectly clean so I just plunged the piping bag into the center to add batter then did the same thing with the other color to get a bullseye look.

I was hoping the zebra striping would show through the jars.  I crossed my fingers and put them in the oven.

Zebra stripes!  

As far I'm concerned, there isn't such a thing as too much when it comes to this kind of cake.  The louder the colors and embellishments, the better.  So pink frosting is an obvious pairing with purple zebra stripes.  

I had planned to put a little zebra striped fondant topper in each jar.  But then I remembered how disgusting fondant is and started going through my cabinets for other options.  Who doesn't like chocolate?  Way better than fondant.  

Since I don't have any circular chocolate molds I put regular cupcake liners in a cupcake pan and piped melted chocolate into the bottom then tapped it to get the air out.  I put them in the fridge to let them set up for about ten minutes then popped them out and flipped them over to use the flat side. I painted zebra striping on them using food coloring thinned out with a touch of gin. (Don't worry!  The alcohol evaporates as the food coloring dries...you aren't going to be giving alcohol to minors or anything.)  

After the striping dried, I added them to the jarcakes then froze them until they were ready to ship. Happy birthday, Sofia!