I really wish I could’ve gotten photos of the cake-baking process as it was the craziest thing to happen to my kitchen since we’ve moved in. A checkerboard cake requires two different colors of cake poured into cake pans with a separator nested in them. I chose to use a white cake mix and a strawberry cake mix. To pour the batters is difficult with just one person, so a second person is handy to hold it down and make sure the batters don’t mix on the bottom. This is where Kristen’s help came in handy. Once the batters are poured, the goal is to quickly remove the divider without so the colors don’t swirl together. That part turned out to be the easy part. The pouring not so much and Kristen and I both ended up with cake batter-covered hands. This really wasn’t a bad thing.

Unfortunately, the cooking process negated some of our hard work. The strawberry batter rose a little more than the white, expanding those parts into the white a little. So our perfect checkerboard pattern wasn’t so perfect. Upon reflection, it dawned on me that white batter only uses egg whites rather than the whole eggs, which would prevent it from rising as much.

Regardless, it turned out wonderful. I frosted it with vanilla whipped frosting and topped it with some fresh strawberries. And even thought the insides didn’t look like squares, it was still damn yummy to eat.