Back to Basics

I just had to make this cake, in spring colors for Easter! When I was a girl, my mother would make checkerboard cakes for us. She also made money cakes. She wrapped quarters, dimes and nickles with aluminum foil and baked them in a cake!

My mom is a hoot. There's always some fun memory of something! Like the time that she hid peanuts all over the backyard for my brothers birthday party and happened to glance outside later and saw all the squirrels taking off with their loot. Too funny!

When I found a "gadget" to make checkerboard cakes, I called my mom and she shared with me how she made the checkerboard 30 some years ago. She baked the layers and then froze them. Then she cut out a small circle, a medium circle and a large circle from each layer and swapped them. Viola! Checkerboard Cake. It probably was cleaner, easier, more fun (and creative) to make this cake the back to basics way then the newfangled way.

Well, at least I served it on my "new" vintage chrome cake holder complete with screw on handled lid, I might add. I don't know about you, but the farther I walk into the vintage era, the more intolerance I have for anything that is not simple and basic. Although it was fun to recreate a good memory from my childhood, regardless of simplicity.