Checkered Cake tutortial

S0,  for my son's first birthday we did a checkered cake. For more details see this post about his party! I chose vanilla and chocolate for the checkers because it was our theme of black and white buffalo check. I used box cakes and cooked each box by the directions, in 8X8 pans and let them cool completely (thankful for winter and a cool clean garage!) Just a note: when I cook my cakes I spray the pans, put a circle of parchment in the bottom and spray that too. It works for me! After they cooled I cut the domed top off, with a magical bread knife I have!  I cut the layers even and set them aside.

Next, is the rings. This cake is made of rings to make checks.. Crazy. The photo above is the steps I took to make more even rings. I used parchment paper for this but in the photo used contrasting construction paper.. hehe.

1. cut out an 8x8 round circle

2. folded the circle in half

3. measured 1.5 inches around

4. cut the inner circle out

5. they are not perfect but give a good template

6. My niece had a wonderful circle cut out for the center circle but you can cut another circle out as         well

Things to consider:

- If the rings are too small, or thin they will break easier and fall apart. Broken rings are hard to put back together even with frosting (my mistake your gain!)

- You can frost around each ring to stick them together better. I did not and maybe it would have not crumbled so much.

I used my template and toothpicks to mark my spots. I used a serrated knife to cut the ring. Making small movements and going around twice to make sure the layer is cut all the way through. Repeated for the inner layer ect.

This is what my rings looked like before I cut. Measure twice cut once. I wanted to make sure each layer was even. I trimmed off some of the bigger circle to help even it out!

I have all my circles cut and laid out. Next is the layering process. Alternate layers; vanilla ring, chocolate ring, vanilla middle,  frost the top, next layer (chocolate vanilla chocolate). This will ensure the checkered look as you see below. This was a fun challenge and look forward to trying this again to better my skills.