Checkerboard cake

Last night I was watching Jr Masterchef on tv and because of that, I suddenly feel the urge to bake something for the weekend. Thinking cap is on! At first, I was thinking of baking a molten lava cake but I will prefer to eat a hot molten lava cake, and you can't really keep it overnight or for a few days. Molten lava cake is meant to be eaten instantly. Soo…what shall I bake???? Aha!! Checkerboard cake! I did bake this cake previously for my sister's birthday. At that time, I just received my checkerboard cake tray from my other sister in the US & am so excited to try it.

You can do checkerboard cake without the tray but it will mean, you end up wasting quite an amount of cake! I got my tray from Wilton. Yes.. they have so many type of baking tray & baking accessories. If I have the chance to visit them one day, I think I will feel like a child in a HUGE CANDY factory. 

Ok. Let us bake a cake! Take out a mixing bowl and add flour, salt, baking powder & baking soda together, and set aside.

In a measuring cup, mix the milk and vanilla extract.

In another mixing bowl, add sugar, eggs and vegetable oil (the oil is the one in the pink measuring cup). First, you need to mix the sugar & egg then you add the vegetable oil. 

Ok..by right you add one egg at a time but I want to save time so I just add all three eggs in the mixing bowl together with the sugar. Hehehhe..as usual, I used both the brown & white sugar.

Once the wet ingredients are already mix together, using a spatula, carefully mix the flour mixture into the wet mixture and alternating it with the milk mixture. You start with the flour and end with the flour. So, you get a brownish mixture like this…

FYI, if you are just using white sugar, obviously your mixture won't be brownish like this. It be more yellowish. Next, divide the mixture into two separate bowl. 

Then chopped some baking chocolate..

…and put it inside a microwave for 2 minutes. Add the melted chocolate and 1 tbsp of milk to one of the bowl with the cake mixture. And you get this….

Then, take out the checkerboard tray..and the white divider is the one that will create the checker effect when you cut it later on. Oh ya..FYI..the divider is not sticking with the tray ya..once you pour the mixture inside the tray, you remove it and use it on another tray.

OK. Here is the tricky part. In order to make thing easy for me, I place each of the mixture in a measuring cup or you can use a disposable piping bag. Or you can used a heavy duty zip tight plastic bag with corner cut to make 1/2 inch opening. Then pipe the mixture into the tray. For this, you really need to be good in estimating how much you need to pipe in each cake tray in order to make sure, you have enough cake batter. You do not need to pipe too much on each layer because the cake will rise up once it start baking in the oven. 

Difficult for me to explain the pattern but I guess by showing you this picture, you will have an idea which batter go where…

So, you much have two vanilla and one chocolate batter on the outer layer (you will place it in this sequence; vanilla outer layer at the bottom, chocolate outer layer in the middle and another vanilla outer layer at the top) 

PLaced all the baking tray inside the oven & bake for 20 minute in a 175C temperature. Once it bake, take out the cake and let it cool down for few minutes...

 ….before you start stacking it on top of each other. Cut of the top of each cake to make the cake look nice & even! I am using chocolate buttercream as both the filling & frosting. To make the this all you need is butter, cocoa powder, icing sugar, vanilla extract and milk or heavy cream. 

Here it is….

And when you cut it…

Ok..I haven't master the skill to make the square nice and even..yet... but this will do for now..hehehe..And apparently this recipe is more moist and soft than the previous one I made. I believe it's because of the vegetable oil :)

Cake ingredients;

• 21/4 cup of flour
• 2 tsp baking power
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup of milk (for the cake)
• 1 tbsp of milk (add with the melting chocolate)
• 11/2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 11/2 cup of sugar
• 11/2 stick of butter, soften (1stick of butter=125 gm) If you using vegetable oil, you just need 1 cup of oil. 
• 3 large eggs
• 3 ounce of dark chocolate (1 ounce = 28gm)

Chocolate buttercream:

• 2 cup of icing sugar
• 1 cup of butter
• 1/2 cup of cocoa powder
• 2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 4 tbsp of milk/heavy cream