Steamed Mocha Zebra Cake

 

A steam-baked soft and velvety butter cake with mocha flavoured lines :)

Yield: One 14cm round cake

Ingredients:

All ingredients in room temperature 

2 eggs, separated 蛋，蛋白、蛋黄分开
70g fine sugar 细糖

50g whole milk 全脂牛奶

10g whipping cream* 动物性奶油*

5g condensed milk 炼乳
20g unsalted butter 无盐奶油

1/4 tsp vanilla essence 香草精

85g top flour 低筋面粉
1/4 tsp baking powder 泡打粉

1 tsp cocoa powder 可可粉

1/4 tsp instant coffee powder 即溶咖啡

About 1 to 1.5 tsp hot water 热水

* can be substitute by 5g of whole milk

* 可用5g 全脂牛奶取代

Directions:

1. Line a 14cm cake tin with parchment paper. Set aside.

2. Mix flour with baking powder using a hand whisk.

3. Mix cocoa powder and instant coffee powder with hot water into a paste.

4. Pour milk, condensed milk, butter and vanilla essence in a bowl. Keep warm the mixture in a rice cooker for about 10 minutes, or till the butter melted.

Allow the mixture to cool down slightly before use.

5.  Beat egg whites in a clean and grease free mixing bowl at medium high speed using an electric mixer till frothy. This takes about 1/2 a minute.

6. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add in the sugar in three lots. When the sugar is well incorporated to the batter, adjust the mixer speed to medium high, and beat the egg white batter for about 1 to 2 minutes, or till firm peaks formed.

7. Add in egg yolks, one at a time, to the egg white batter and mix well.

When lift up the whisks, the dripped batter should be able to stay at least 3 seconds before disappearing into the bowl of batter.

8. Start to boil some water in a pot, to be ready for steaming the cake later.

9. Sieve in 1/3 of the flour mixture, to the batter and mix using the hand whisks. About 3 to 5 clockwise and anti clockwise stirs each round. It's okay to have some streaks of unmixed flour, as the subsequent mixings will remove them eventually.

9. Pour in 1/2 of the milk mixture from (4) into the egg-flour batter and mix using  the hand whisks. 

Mix in a sequence of

Flour ➡️ milk ➡️ flour ➡️ milk ➡️ flour 

After the batter has been well blended, then start to mix the entire batter using a spatula to ensure no flour or milk is settle at the bottom.

Avoid over mixing which will resulted in a tough cake.

10. Pour about 1/3 of the batter into another bowl. Mix it with mocha paste into an even batter.

11. Pour the batter into the cake mould, alternating between the egg and cocoa batters. Both batters to be poured to the centre of the cake tin, creating a concentric pattern.

The portions need not be exact, use your intuition will do :)

12. Give the batter a few sturdy jolts to get rid of trapped air parcel in the batter.

10. Put a steamer stand into the pot with boling water. Lower the cake tin into the pot. Steam the cake at medium high temperature for 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to medium low for another 8~10 minutes.

11. Insert a thin stick into the middle of the cake to test the readiness of the cake. If the cake is done, remove from the pot and let it cool in the cake tin for about 3 minutes.

12. Remove the cake from the cake tin and let it cool on the wire rack.

13. Cut and serve. Enjoy :)