Checker board cake

Checker board cake

Ingredients 

2 ½ cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

¾ cup milk

1 ½ tsp vanilla essence

1 ½ cups sugar

200 gm butter, softened

3 large eggs

90 gm dark chocolate, grated

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.

Grease three 8 inch cake tins.

Sieve together flour, baking powder and salt.

Mix together ¾ cup milk and vanilla essence.

Beat together butter and sugar. 

Add the eggs one by one beating well after each addition. 

Add the flour and milk alternately starting and ending with flour. So it is going to be flour-milk-flour-milk-flour.

Take out half of the batter and keep aside. Melt the chocolate with 2 tsp milk. Add to one of the batters. So now you have two batters, one vanilla and one chocolate. 

Put the batters into two separate piping bags. Make a big slit at the bottom. 

Now you have to pipe roundels of the batter in the three tins. In each tin make one circle of vanilla batter, then next circle of chocolate batter, then vanilla and so on till you reach the centre.

The important thing to remember is the roundels in two tins will be same and one tin will have the opposite. So if you have two with the vanilla circle as the outer most ring then one tin will have the chocolate layer as the outermost ring. This way when you stack the cakes it will give the checkerboard effect.

Bake for 15 minutes.

For the icing

I have used whip cream icing here. However buttercream works as well.

2 cups whipping cream

100 gm dark chocolate, grated

2 tsp milk

Melt the chocolate and the milk.

Whip the cream till it reaches the soft peak consistency.

 Add the melted chocolate and whip some more.

Now sandwich the cakes with the whip cream. Remember the two similar cakes will be at the top and bottom. The one with different roundels in the middle. Cover the cake with whip cream frosting. It is better if you keep the cake in the fridge for an hour or so as it will help the cake layers stick together. 

However I, under duress from my son, had to cut it the moment I finished icing. If you wish you can sprinkle some coffee powder on the top.