Mary celebrated her Sweet 16 a couple years ago with her friends. We took them to see Virginia Repertory’s musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” at Hanover Tavern followed up with a party at our house complete with a 6 tiered rainbow checkerboard cake! What a fun celebration of the awesome young lady she’s becoming!
I first learned about checkerboard cakes when a colleague, Alice, at Motorola brought in a chocolate and vanilla checkerboard cake to the office for a potluck luncheon. It looked amazing and I was very intrigued as to how she managed to pull that off. She shared with me that there was a specialty cake pan set for making it. Here’s an example of one. Tip: when I saw the picture at the link, I realized I was using my insert incorrectly. I always tried to hook it over the edge of the pans, the picture shows it supported by the inside edge of the pan. Oops!
Years later after having kids, I purchased a checkerboard cake pan set for myself! I still love the surprise of how it looks when you cut into the cake!
Each year I ask my kids what kind of cake they would like me to make. I don’t bake a lot of cakes, however for their birthdays, I go all out for whatever they want. Mary wanted a rainbow cake. I was trying to think of how I could pull that off other than simply icing and decorations. Then t hit me…I can make a rainbow checkerboard cake!
So I started with a white cake batter (vanilla) and colored it red, orange, yellow, blue, green, and purple with food coloring gels. Then using the pans and the special insert to assist in aligning the batters in rings…I proceded to make 3 layers such that each color was in the center, middle, and outer rings between red, orange, and yellow. Afterwards, I repeated that again with the blue, green, and purple.
The musical, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” was fantastic! The actors did a superb job…I still laugh when I think of Linus following the giant pencil around with his eyes as he was writing, Snoopy’s happy dance, and the hunt for the rabbit! We are a theatre loving family having grown up with parents that acted and staged managed so many shows at Barksdale (Hanover Tavern). Love passing that on to my kids and their friends! Such fun!
After returning home from the theatre, the kids really enjoyed the rainbow checkerboard cake! Take a look at how it turned out once we cut in it!
Ha ha! A delightful surprise when you cut into the cake to see the rainbow checkerboard pattern. The true checkerboard patter is more apparent when you use just 2 colors of batter, however, who can resist making a rainbow checkerboard cake?!
Mary's Sweet 16 Birthday with a Rainbow Checkerboard Cake
Ingredients
For the cake: *
- 3 1/4 cups cake flour sifted
- 2 1/3 cups sugar
- 5 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 6 egg whites **
- 1 1/2 cup milk **
- 1 Tbsp vanilla
- 2 sticks unsalted butter cut into cubes **
- Food coloring I use wilton gel food coloring
- checkerboard cake pan
For the icing: *
- 1 stick cold butter cut into cubes
- 3 cups confectioners sugar
- 2-3 Tbsp milk
- 1 tsp vanilla ***
- pinch salt
Instructions
For the cake:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease or spray baking spray in the pans.
- In your mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt on low speed.
- In a separate bowl, combine the egg whites, 1/2 cup of the milk, and vanilla. Beat together with a fork to combine.
- Add the remaining 1 cup of milk and butter to the dry ingredients and beat on low speed until combined, increasing speed to medium for 1 1/2 minutes.
- Add the egg mixture to the mixing bowl 1/4 at a time and beat on medium speed for 20 seconds after each addition.
- Divide the batter into 3 bowls, coloring each one a different color: red, yellow, orange. *
- Stir to combine the color throughout the batter and pour into large ziploc bags.
- Using the checkerboard cake insert in one of the 3 pans, fill each section with a different color batter.
- Take out the insert, rinse, and continue with the other 2 pans so that each batter color is in each location within the pans (center, middle, outer rings).
- Place cake pans in preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes and a toothpick comes out clean.
- Repeat steps 2-11 for the remaining 3 cake batter colors: green, blue, and purple. *
For the icing:
- Beat together the butter, confectioners sugar, milk, vanilla, and salt on low speed just until combined.
- Scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure everything gets incorporated.
- Beat again on medium speed for 3 minutes until fluffy.
- You want a creamy consistency that holds peaks. If the icing is too wet, add some more confectioners sugar. Conversely, if it is too dry, add a little bit more milk.
- If desired, add food coloring of your choice.
- Ice the cake including generous icing between each tier.
- Decorate cake as desired. (we used sparkly candles, candy pearls, and cotton candy!)
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