Well. It's been a while, I see. Whoops. So. How to sum up the past few months before we move onto the important thing, namely cake and new ovens? The best way to describe my summer is that involved a lot of pizza and a lot of roller derby, as I worked in two different pizza joints and worked hard on my skating. Big Easy Rollergirls taught me everything I know about skating and made my last year in New Orleans amazing! I spent a lot time with my friends, especially my wolf pack, and became a regular at Twelve Mile Limit, the best snobby cocktail bar I've come across. But, come August, it was time to move again.
I moved to Boston to start my non-profit management MBA at the Heller School. It's a huge change in identity, and so far it's great! My roommate also lived in New Orleans, and her sister is a friend of mine (before we settled on that, I interviewed some truly weird potential roommates. Maybe I'll tell you about it someday). Going back to school does leave less room for creative pursuits, but I've managed somehow. Soon I'll tell you about the beer brewing in recon room of my apartment, but for now, I'll restrict my comments to the oven situation.
The apartment is lovely, but the kitchen is best described as...dated. The oven and fridge are avocado green, the floor and backsplash tiles are brown. It's 70s-tastic. The oven never worked very well, as the door would only open with a fight, and fell off every so often. The fridge is the antithesis of energy efficient. So really, using the kitchen could be an exercise in slapstick comedy. It all came to a head Thursday night. The Gentleman in Question has a nice round birthday in a few days, and I had promised him cake. After some effort, I had the batter in the pans ready to go, so I opened the oven door. Big mistake. The door came flying off, crazy hot, and crashed to the floor. I couldn't get it back on. The landlord came over, and we discovered the hinges were warped. His wife kindly baked the cake for me, and our oven door is leaning against the door to the porch. As of Thursday night, there was talk of getting a new oven. My roommate is quite pleased with that turn of events, and the Gentleman is scheming a way to get me a new refrigerator.
The cake was totally worth it. The Gentleman requested some combination of chocolate and raspberry, and being an overachiever, I decided to do a checkerboard with those flavors. To get the checkerboard effect, you need a plastic insert. It comes in a kit. There are many options, so investigate. The pans in the kit I linked to are pretty nice. Once you have that essential piece of equipment, the rest is fairly simple. Finding recipes can be tricky, because the two cake flavors need to have similar textures, and bake at the same temperature for the same amount of time. Raspberry cake was an additional challenge. Every recipe involved jello. Which is creepy. Until Smitten Kitchen saved the day, with her adapted Pink Lady Cake recipe. I changed it further, cutting it in half and subbing in raspberries. For the chocolate, I went with this recipe from Joy of Baking, also cut in half. The raspberry flavor shines through, and the chocolate is rich without being too sweet. My cake came out extra dense and not as checkerboardy because of the baking drama, but yours will turn out light and delightful. You'll get three bowls dirty making these cakes, so the mess isn't too bad.