My Checker Board Birthday Cake

So I celebrated my birthday on February 1st, and as usual I made my own birthday cake. This year I wanted to try my hand at a checker board cake. I chose chocolate and yellow cake with my creamy chocolate frosting. I have pictures to guide you through each step.

There are three ways, that I am aware of, to create a checker board cake. One is by baking two types of cake and cutting and layering to get the checker effect. The other is placing the two different cake batters (alternating) in the same cake pan and baking to create the same effect. And the other is purchasing a checker board pan set. It comes with a pan and a ring that is broken into several rings. You would put the batter, alternating colors, into the ring divider then remove the ring and bake.

I chose to do the first.

First pick the two cake types you like, be sure they are not to close in color.
Chocolate/white, red/white, or tint white cake pink/blue for a baby shower or yellow/light green for Easter or dark green/white for St Patricks day. Be creative and have fun!

I like to bake my cakes the day before and once they have cooled completely I wrap loosely in Saran wrap and allow it to sit out over night. This allows the cake to set up and is easier to work with.

                                                                                              
One of my favorite tools is a cake leveler. You can purchase this from a craft store in their cake decorating isle. It's quick and insure even layers. It has a bent bar with a wire strung between the ends. On each end are little notches allowing you to adjust the wire to the height you desire. Adjust the wire so that you cut away just enough of the top of the cake to make it level.
Using a sawing motion (back and forth) level the top of your cake using your leveler or a knife if you prefer


When using a leveler, place your hand on top of the cake as you get closer to the edge place you hand on the side of the cake opposite you. Allow the wire to press against your fingers as you work the leveler through the outer crust of  the cake. The wire will not cut you, but this will insure you don't break the edge of the cake.

 I usually save the tops of the cake for my husband and boys to snack on. This allows me to finish the cake with less interruptions : )

Next, adjust the cake leveler and *torte your cake into two even layers. Repeat this process with the chocolate cake. You will have four layers, two yellow and two chocolate.

(*torte: slicing cake into thinner layers)

Now for the rings.

I used a saucer and two metal cookie cutters, use whatever you have handy. You can see the difference in size from the picture below.

I started by placing my saucer centered on a single cake layer and I carefully, I cut around the saucer using a paring knife. I removed the sauce and using the larger cookie cutter I centered it inside the first cut and pressed down to cut the center out, then again with the smaller cutter I lined it up in the center of the second cut and cut the very center of the cake. Repeat with the chocolate cake. 

Now the fun part!

Carefully remove the cake rings from the center of each cake and replace them, alternating in color. Putting frosting in between to secure them together. I filled a pastry bag with frosting and piped a line inside of each ring then smoothed it out with my cake blade.

When finished your cake layer should look like this...............

Apply a layer of butter-cream over the completed cake layer then start the process again.

If your cake ring breaks as you are stacking them, don't worry just glue pieces together with butter-cream.

Be sure to alternate each layer:

If the bottom layer has a chocolate outer ring then the layer on top should have a yellow outer ring, the third will have a chocolate outer ring and the final layer on top should have a yellow outer ring. See the example below.

When you have filled and stacked the layers, cover cake with butter-cream and decorate as desired.

Slice, serve and wait for the ooh and ahhs. Then enjoy a slice yourself with a big glass of milk.

I hope you will try to make a checker board cake yourself, if anything people will be amazed at what you did and will ask "How did you do that?" 

Dessert Theaters and Drama Camps

Dessert Theaters

On occasion I am asked to make desserts for my churches dessert theater. For this particular theater presentation I decided to do a dessert tray of assorted items.

On the menu we have (bottom right;clockwise) chocolate chip cookies, Cranberry Dream Bars (a copycat of a popular coffee shops cranberry bar) Chocolate Truffle Torte (no flour in this baby), Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, Lemon Bundt Cake, Snicker Bars Brownies, and a Blueberry Tart.


All these dessert are homemade in my own kitchen. It's a challenging but rewarding experience. Twenty-six tables are set up for three nights of a great performance and great desserts. We can accommodate upwards of 156 people a night. It's a lot of desserts but I love being able to serve doing something I love.

Having an upright freezer in my garage makes a difference. I can make alot of these desserts ahead of time and freeze until the day of each performance.



Youth Drama Camps

This is one of two cakes I made for our youth Drama Camp. The tragedy and comedy mask are made from color flow. Color flow is a decorating technique using a mixture of water, color flow mix, and powdered sugar. It take a long time for color flow to dry so plan on 2-3 days of drying time. I don't have an air brush (yet) so I used the color sprays you can find in the baking isle at your local grocery.

The second cake, and my favorite, is this Lil' Orphan Annie cake. This was the production the youth performed at the completion of camp. I printed an image I found online and enlarged it. I then traced the image onto a piece of parchment paper. I then placed the parchment paper on my frosted cake and using a toothpick, poked little holes through the paper leaving an image. I then piped around the image using black buttercream and filled it in with buttercream using a pastry bag and a star tip. Annie's name is made of color flow, and the yellow is colored spray and topped with yellow edible glitter.  

Alice in Wonderland Cake

I made this cake recently for two little girls. I had a lot of fun creating the design for this cake. It's five layers of white cake with a strawberry filling. I frosted it in vanilla buttercream and covered the cake in green fondant.

A tea party needs a pretty table cloth. I placed a piece of fondant on top after I cut out a pretty pattern around the edge. I then encircled the top with pink gum paste flowers and leaves.

A purple and blue fondant rope was wrapped around the bottom of the cake and eatable wafer paper Wonderland Characters were glued on with royal icing, and white chocolate playing cards were added. Wafer paper is made from rice and is paper thin. Food coloring is used to print images onto the paper which then can be cut out and used to decorate cakes and cookies. There is a close up of Alice for you to see the detail manufactures can achieve.

Now a tea party isn't complete without tea cups and saucers. I made this one out of gum paste and attached a gum paste flower and leaf with royal icing. When it was dry I painted it with a  combination of clear vanilla extract and pearl dust. 

I made three large gum paste flowers and leaves, one blue, pink and purple. I attached the flowers and leaves using royal icing.  Gum paste when dried is very hard and fragile. Handle your gum paste creations with care.

 

The completed cake:

Picture courtesy of Aimee D.