Chocolate Checkerboard Cake

Cakes are spectacular without much gilding the lily but sometimes it is fun to do something a little bolder. I don’t knwo if any of you have ever used a checkerboard cake pan but I love mine! It is so much fun to cut into the cake and see people’s faces when they see that checkerboard pattern show up. I have done them in pink and white, in blue and white (baby showers), and the traditonal chocolate and white..but you could do them in any combination. The trick is not to spread the frosting thickly between the layers but use only a thin layer, just enough to hold it together. Otherwise hte checkerboard will be messed up. Now, of course since I was making htis for a post, and I was in a hurry, I did not get the batter put in evenly and the squares are imperfect. I hope you won’t hold htat against either me or the cake but will try this! You can get the pans at almost any baking supply. It takes 3 9 onch pans and a plastic form that you put in the pans while you are adding the batter.

You can see that I got the batter in messy but you can get an idea of how it looks before it bakes. Afterwards it looks like this:

Normally the squares of color are perfectly squared off. :/

Anyway, try this. It is fun and sort of retro. And delicious.

Checkerboard Cake

3 oz bittersweet chocolate (or semisweet)

4 c cake flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter

2 c sugar

4 eggs

1 Tbs vanilla

1 1/3 c milk

Melt chocolate. Set aside.

Combine dry ingredients.

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla.

Add milk, alternating with flour mixture, to butter mixture. Beat at medium speed for 1 minute.

Divide batter in half. Add chocolate to one half and stir well.

Grease and flour cake pans. Using the plastic insert pour in batter in designated areas. You will use 2 with the same pattern. ie: 2 with chocolate center circles, and 1 with vanilla center circle. See picture for details. Remove the plastic insert and rinse. Do the next two pans the same way.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes and turn out to let cool completely.

To frost-

Use the chocolate frosting recipe here

Cover each layer with a thin layer of frosting. Stack, alternating outside colors. Frost with the rest of the frosting.

Serves 8-10, 12 if you cut thin slices.