I purchased my checkerboard cake pan as somewhat of an impulse buy through JCPenney.com, while doing some other Christmas shopping there.

I decided on the spot that this was just what I needed to take my plain-old cake up a notch and really “wow” the family at our Christmas Eve dinner with a new and different, fancy-shmancy checkerboard cake. My aspirations were greater than this cake pan set would be able to deliver. Here’s why I give the Checkerboard Cake pan three stars-

What you get-

This cake pan set comes with three, non-stick 9” cake pans and one 3-compartment, concentric circular (picture a bull’s-eye), plastic divider, and instructions for use.

The instruction vs. how it worked for me-

The instructions (generally)-

First, you place the plastic divider ring in cake pan #1. The three “arms” of the divider snap into place over the lip of the cake pan, theoretically holding it steadfast. Using two differently colored cake batters, you first fill the center circle of your divider with your darker colored batter (all the while, applying pressure to the divider ring to keep it firmly in place), then the middle circle with your lighter batter, and, lastly the outermost ring with your darker batter. After pouring the batters in, you then must very carefully unsnap and pull the divider ring straight up and out of the pan thus creating a cake that looks, by itself, very much like a target.

For cake pan #2, you do the opposite pattern, light batter in the middle, dark in the center, light on the outside. And, for cake pan #3, you repeat the pattern of cake pan #1 (dark, light, dark.)

You then bake your cakes per your recipe. After baking and cooling your cakes, you then assemble them. The checkerboard pattern is achieved by placing the cakes in their numerical order, cakes 1,2 & 3 (or 3,2 & 1, it doesn’t make a difference), so that the 3 striped rings in each layer are offset by the opposite pattern of stripes in the neighboring layer(s). If you’re having trouble picturing this, here’s a visual aide-

Cake #1- DLD
Cake #2- LDL
Cake #3- DLD

And Viola! Queen Martha herself could not have made a cake any more lovely than this one, right?
Not exactly.

How it worked for me-

After having made cakes with this pan set on two different occasions, and following the instructions to the letter, I still was not able to achieve a clean, checkerboard design. My cake’s stripes, or rings, came out somewhat wavy, as opposed to the ideal, square. The real bummer about this, is that you have no way of knowing how straight or messed up your stripes came out until you cut a slice of cake, which is completely impractical if you’re using this to make a cake for an event or gift, since it’d look pretty tacky to bring a hacked-up cake to a party.

Most of the problems that I ran into with this set were with the divider ring. For one thing, you are only given one ring for your three-pan set. Therefore, you have to stop what you’re doing and rinse it off between each layer. I also found that the divider ring, upon being set and snapped into the cake pans, did not contact the bottom of the pan well at all, leaving ample room for your batters to sneak under and mix. Even with pressing down on the ring while pouring batter (how many hands do these people think I have?), I still had some leakage.

The other problem that I experienced both times was that while the darker batters baked up nice and done, the lighter batters were still runny and raw. I don’t know that there’s anything that can be done about this, since darker cakes apparently just bake faster. I would advise you though, to double check the baking instructions on your two cake mixes before you buy so that you don’t end up with one that needs to be baked at 325 degrees, and another that needs 375, leaving you with a half burned, half raw cake.

So, is it worth it?

Even though my cakes did not come out as even and perfect as I would have liked, I still did still get a lot of compliments and “wow!’s”, which is really what I was going for in the first place. So, for the $11 plus tax and shipping that I paid for this set, I guess I got my money’s worth out of it.

I think that this would make a cute and unique gift for a friend who likes to bake, or maybe as a wedding shower present. Look out Martha!






Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 11