Choco- Vanilla Checkerboard cake - Happy Birthday Bhai !!

Blogging and food photography has always been a lonely affair for me. I am always alone when I bake or cook and it's been a long time since I took back seat and enjoyed watching the whole magic unfold before me. So it was exciting when my hubby told me his bro and he would bake a cake. And not just any cake a checker board cake. I have been dying to try a checker board cake ever since I saw this recipe at Ria's collection. Hats off to Ria who went ahead and made a cake without the checker board pan. My geometry skills were always dull so I decided to get a pan and my hubby surprised me by getting me one during his last trip to New York. The pan has been lying around for more than a year awaiting the most opportune moment and though I am jealous that it wasn't me but the brothers who got to inaugurate it but, I did not mind taking the back seat for the day.

I am quite pathetic when it comes to frosting. I can't stand the sweetness of frosting so I never tried my hands at cake decoration, but these days I am getting obsessed with presentation and I am transferring this madness to my hubby so you will see more recipes with frosting from now on :) For this cake we just used some whipping cream and  some choco chips and red cake decor balls and I was excited to see a layer of frosting over a cake we've baked :)

I am lazy to blog these days and the internet was down for a couple of days so this post was composed in  bits and pieces- I sort of have lost track on what I wanted to say.

This cake is dedicated to bhai ( the masked man in the picture) whose celebrating his birthday today. He was down with fever when he baked this cake so wore a mask to spare us from nasty germs ( that's so sweet ). 

Ingredients for Choco- Vanilla Checkerboard cake ( Recipe Source- Ria's Collection)

For the Vanilla Sponge

Eggs- 3

Sugar- 1/2 cup

Flour-  1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp

Cornflour- 1 tbsp

Vanilla extract- 1 tsp

For Chocolate Sponge

Eggs-3 

Sugar- 1/2 cup

Flour- 1/2 cup- 3 tbsp

Cocoa powder- 2 tbsp

Corn flour - 1 tbsp

Vanilla extract- 1 tsp

Whipped cream- 1 1/2 cup

Soaking syrup- 1 portion ( I used chocolate sauce instead)

Direction ( For both Vanilla and Chocolate Cake)

Preheat the oven at 180 degree Celsius. Line a round 8 inch checkerboard pan with butter and parchment paper and place the ring. Now for each cake ( vanilla and chocolate follow the same instructions).Sift the dry ingredients together and set aside.Beat the eggs and sugar together till they form stiff peaks. The eggs and sugar will triple the volume do this till it does. Since this cake has no baking soda and baking powder Ria suggested this be done religiously and so I did. Now fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. The mixture will deflate a bit but that's normal. This procedure is same for both the chocolate and vanilla cake. So if you have followed the instructions you will have two sets of batter in front of you. If you have the checker board pan pour the batters into alternate rings like in the picture above. Bake the cake for 30 minutes and cool for 10 minutes on a rack thereafter. You will have to make two cakes to get the checker board effect using the checker board pan. So if you have vanilla in the outer ring in the first ring in the first pan alternate the layers. Do the reverse for the second cake. After baking the two cakes and cooling them assemble one cake over the other. I did this using some chocolate syrup. And then finally I whipped up some cream and frosted the cake. But if you don't have a checker board cake you will have to bake the chocolate and vanilla cake separately and cut them into concentric circles and swap them. Please refer Ria's blog for further directions she did it that way.

http://riascollection.blogspot.in/2011/02/we-turned-oneits-time-to-celebrate.html

Happy cake time !!!! And Happy birthday bhai. You rock !