Chocolate checkered cake

 

This was my first attempt at putting a cake together and decorating it.  I'm not going to share the recipe today because I am still fixing it, But I will show how the whole thing came together.  I had fun putting it together and I learned a lot along the way.  I used a chocolate and a vanilla Italian sponge cake, Chocolate glaze, Reeses pieces, and Italian butter cream frosting with peanut butter.

First step was to cut my sponge cakes into rings.  First, I cut each cake in half horizontally, so I had four cakes total.  I used a tea set to measure out the different sizes of circles.  The larger outer circle was the plate, the middle circle was the saucer for the tea cup, and the circle shown here was the tea cup.  I also cut a smaller circle withing this one but I just free handed it.  In total I had four rings for each cake, and a center piece.

To construct the cake I used Butter cream for the glue.  Starting with the vanilla outer ring, I placed a chocolate ring inside.  I kept this up until I had placed all of the rings making a whole cake, ending with the vanilla center.  within each ring I put a layer of butter cream so the rings would stick together. Before starting my second layer I made sure everything was level, and I covered the whole layer with butter cream.  The second layer starts with a chocolate outer ring, and ends with a chocolate center.

This is a picture of the finished layers.  There are four layers total.  From the side view you can see the alternating exterior rings.  There is butter cream in between each ring and each layer.  Next cover the whole cake with a thing layer of buttercream and place it in the Refrigerator for about two hours.

When the crumb layer has chilled add a full layer of butter cream and place it in the freezer for two hours.  Placing it in the freezer will make the butter cream hard and the next step easier.  A note on the butter cream,  I wasn't a fan of the Italian butter cream, it kept on separating and I had to keep on beating it.  The butter and the egg whites did not like each other.  I'm sure this problem had to do with my skill level.  After doing some research on line I realized that this happens to a lot of people.  I may try it again someday and practice a bit, but I think for this cake I will use the traditional butter cream of powdered sugar, and butter.  For those who don't know Italian butter cream is made with butter and an Italian Meringue.  An Italian meringue is made with egg whites and a hot sugar syrup.  The meringue is extremely stiff and shiny when done.  Then you slowly add in softened butter.  I did make two batches and the second one came out better, but I still wasn't a fan.  

Next pour on the glaze.  A chocolate glaze is just heavy cream with melted chocolate.  To glaze the cake I placed it on a cooling rack over a pot, to catch the excess chocolate.  After pouring the chocolate I realized that the chocolate layer was really thin.  I placed the cake in the refrigerator for about ten minutes and then placed all of the chocolate that had poured into the pan back into my bowl.  After a second layer of chocolate glaze I got the desired thickness.

I decorated the sides with crushed Reeses pieces and the top I piped on "happy bday".  Piping was a lot harder then I thought. I started out trying the cursive and ended with bold capitol letters.  The butter cream was not working very well either.  To thicken it I added some powdered sugar.  This helped a lot, otherwise I wasn't going to be able to pipe anything with the soft Italian butter cream.

The design worked out great, but I am still working on the recipe.  Like I said, next time I probably will use a more traditional butter cream, also instead of the cocoa powder that I used for the chocolate cake I think I will use real milk chocolate.  I also learned that I need to practice my piping!