Checkerboard Cake

Go ahead - take a shot at me. I probably deserve it. I'm the world's biggest sucker for things that look "interesting" in my subjective opinion. While shopping at my local mega grocer, I happened upon this cake pan set.



Looks rather interesting doesn't it? Inside are 3 - 9" cake pans and a plastic divider ring (if you're handy you can make it yourself). Actor Boy is on his way to New York for a couple of months and he and the new girlfriend were coming over for brunch. By the way, the new girlfriend is very sweet and gets the mother's seal of approval (like it really matters what I think). She even helps in the clean up department and is totally not intimidated by our insane family. Baba even asked for her phone number in NYC..just in case we needed to reach Actor Boy. Poor dear - has no concept of email and facebook let alone cell phones.

I decided to follow the recipe on the Wilton box for this cake and went through each step to the letter.

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
2 2/3 cups granulated sugar (I cut this back by 2/3 cup)
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups milk
4 squares (4 oz) semi-sweet chocolate, melted
Chocolate buttercream icing

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Pray pans with vegetable pan spray (I used the Wilton's cake release)

In large bowl, cream butter and sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and vanilla; mix well after each addition. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture alteratively with milk; mix well after each addition. Cocontinue beating 1 minute. Divide batter in half. Stir melted chocolate into half the batter and mix well.

Place batter dividing ring (you need to have this) into one prepared pan. The pans are 9"x1". Pour darker coloured batter in outer and center sections and lighter batter in the middle section. Fill sections half way.

Remove the ring from pan by carefully lifting straight up on handles. Rinse and completely dry the ring.

Place ring in second prepared pan and repeat what you did for the first pan. These two pans form your top and bottom layer of your checkerboard cake. Clean and dry your ring again and put into prepared pan. This time reverse - white layer on the outside, darker layer on the inside. Bake the 3 pans at 350 for 30 - 35 minutes.



Although the directions said 30-35 minutes, I took the cakes out before the 30 minute mark and they seemed a little overbaked to me.

Assembly

Position layer with chocolate cake on outside onto serving plate; spread top with chocolate icing. Position layer with yellow cake on the outside on top of this layer spreading top with icing. Position third cake on the top and ice the rest of the cake.



I don't know - kinda sorta resembles the box but not really. The icing - another story and a bottle of wine.

Verdict: I found the cake rather boring and indeed, it was a little overbaked. It wasn't really dry - but on the dry side and quite dense in texture. Would I make it again. I think so, but I'd have to find another recipe. I also don't think I was entirely exact in my 1/2 way measurement in each pan. Next time, I'll tweak it a little.

I suspect that Psychgrad will become the recipient of this cake pan set but not until she finds a house.