Checkerboard Cake

Last Thursday I was showing off my Fourth of July cake to a classmate while we were waiting for the HPLC to run. She then asked me if I had ever made a checkerboard cake, which apparently involves using a special pan insert. I asked if you could just make separate cakes and cut them up and assemble them - but she said that would be way too hard. I don't know about you, but to me that sounded like a challenge. She also had problems making a chocolate/vanilla checkerboard cake because the chocolate was so much heavier than the vanilla, so it would sink under the insert and mix with the vanilla.

Friday morning I made two 9" French vanilla cakes and two 9" Germain chocolate cakes. (Very international huh?) I leveled both to 1" and after some calculations grabbed a bowl and a cup to use as stencils for the two circles I had to cut out. (The cakes turned out to be 8" after baking, so the math was slightly more difficult than 9 divided by 3. Don't lose faith in me!)


I stacked the cakes, cut a small inner circle using the cup, and a larger outer circle using the bowl. I then switched them up and assembled the pieces, using buttercream frosting in between each layer.



Then I got a tad bit fancy and frosted the outside in two flavors - chocolate and vanilla. I figured it was only fitting since the inside represented both flavors too.


Cutting into it was the funnest part!


Eating it was pretty fun too.


And if you are ever at a loss for what to do with the cake top scraps and extra icing, I have an idea for you.


Make a mess! (A delicious mess.)