Berry Checkerboard Cake with Lemon Buttercream
November 7, 2016 | By Jeremy Scheck | Leave a Comment
This recipe is inspired by the vintage checkerboard cake set that my grandmother gave me. You can get one here for just $10, or you can make this a marble cake by swirling the two colors together in the cake pan with a knife.
Adapted from http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-yellow-butter-cake-14637
Berry Checkerboard Cake with Lemon Buttercream
Ingredients
- 1/2, 8 tbsp (113g) cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 1/2 (300g) cups sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 2 1/4 cups (270g) cake flour or all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/4 (295ml) cups whole milk
- 2.5 oz (70g) strawberries (pureed)
- 2.5 oz (70g) blackberries (pureed)
- Red Food Coloring
- Blue Food coloring
- Zest of 1 lemon
- Juice of 1 lemon
- American Buttercream Recipe
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F
- Butter and flour three 8" round cake pans (if doing checkerboard) or two 9" round cake pans (if doing the marble design)
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
- Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl by hand, with electric beaters, or in the bowl of a stand mixer. I made this cake by hand.
- Beat in eggs, one at a time, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula after each incorporation.
- On low, add in half the flour, then the milk, then the rest of the flour, beating until just mixed.
- In two separate bowls, divide batter in half.
- Add pureed strawberries and a few drops of red food coloring to one bowl, and the blackberries and blue food coloring to the other.
- If you are using checkerboard set, fill cake pans according to instructions. If you are doing a marble pattern, fill each cake pan with scoops of batter of each color in random areas of the pans. When full, use a butter knife or a toothpick to swirl the colors, making a marble pattern.
- Bake 20-28 mins, checking for doneness at 20 mins for three 8" pans or bake 25-30 mins in two 9" pans.
- Cool on a wire rack for 30 mins, then invert out of pans and cool completely.
- Once cool, cover with plastic wrap and freeze cakes until you are ready to frost them. This makes the layers crumb less and easier to work with.
- For the buttercream, follow my American Buttercream recipe, beating in the juice and zest of the lemon at step 4.
- Remove cake layers from freezer, and take off plastic wrap and frost the cakes as you like!
- Here is a great tutorial on how to frost a cake like a pro! This video got me started, but I am still learning. Don't worry if your cake doesn't look perfect. Mine didn't!
Jeremy Scheck spent high school perfecting his signature cupcakes, making quiches and coffee cake by the dozen at a local bakery, and teaching cooking demonstrations at Williams-Sonoma. As a 10th grader in 2016, he began documenting his favorite recipes on a blog called The After School Bakery. In college, Jeremy learned to make 50 gallons of ice cream in the food science lab, how to prune grape vines in the teaching vineyard, the best way to milk a cow in Northern Italy, and why film photography is an art worth saving. As a sophomore in 2020, he traded blog photos for video and became a TikTok culinary sensation. Jeremy has been featured on the Today show, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, BBC Radio, People, and Access Hollywood, among others. Jeremy is a graduate of Cornell University with a double major in Spanish and Italian, and significant coursework in food science. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more about Jeremy.