My friend, Amanda, wanted to make something special for her mother-in-laws 50th birthday, so she enlisted my help to make a vanilla-raspberry cake. What we decided on was a checkerboard cake with white vanilla cake and purple vanilla cake and then a raspberry filling and raspberry flavored whipped frosting. Unfortunately, I was not able to get my grubby paws on any photos of the cake once it was cut into, and therefore, I have no proof that it’s actually a checkerboard cake. But, we did use this Wilton Checkerboard cake pan set. Now, I have used this pan several times, and the cakes almost always turn out cool looking and resembling a checkerboard. But, I have NEVER had it look quite as cool and perfectly squared as it does in the Wilton picture. So, oh well! Maybe someday I’ll get it right.
Although I have no proof of the inside awesomeness that was this cake, I think the outside is pretty cool, too. And worth talking about.
For the frosting, I like Pastry Pride and I buy it at Smart & Final. It comes frozen in a carton and you thaw and then whip it at home. It’s the consistency of cool whip, but sets a bit firmer. It’s also a non-dairy product, so a cake with Pastry Pride can sit outside of the fridge worry free, plus all our lactose intolerant friends and family can still enjoy it. There is a similar product called Bettercream that I have also used and is nearly identical. They both come in vanilla or chocolate. The vanilla can be colored nicely. And, they can both be easily enhanced with flavored oils.
We flavored ours with some raspberry flavoring oil that we picked-up from our local cake and candy supply store. The raspberry oil happened to have a purple-ish tint to it and it lightly colored the frosting. In person, you can see the very delicate color, but it’s so subtle, you can’t see it at all in the pictures. Plus, we covered the cake with white chocolate shavings, any way!
We used vanilla melting wafers, melted them down, spread them out on wax paper and let them harden. Once they had hardened, we used a metal spatula to scrape off shavings. To get them onto the cake, we simply grabbed handful and pressed them into the sides and top of the frosted cake. We had to move fast, though, because the heat of our hands melted the thin shavings.
Once we had the cake frosted and covered in white chocolate shavings, we moved on to the letters. We melted the rest of the white chocolate until it was smooth again. And this time, we added a few colored wafers to get the right shade we wanted. To get this light pinkish-purpleish color, we used about half of a blue wafer and two or three red ones in about one and a half cups of white wafers. Once the chocolate was the color we wanted and was melted completely smooth, we poured it into a pastry bag.
We piped the chocolate, spelling “Tracy” and then made our 5 and our 0 straight onto wax paper. Before the chocolate set, we added toothpicks to the bottoms of the letters, sticking down. This was our steak so we could put the letters into the cake later. Then, we traced over the letters a couple more times with the remaining chocolate to get the letters thick and sturdy. Once they were completely set, we peeled off the wax paper and stood the letters into the top of the cake.
Viola!
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