Checkerboard Loaf Pan

Checkerboard cake pans have been around for quite some time. They’re round cake pans that come with a special insert that lets you add different colors or flavors of batter to the cake and keeps those components separate, so that the finished cake has a checkerboard-like appearance when sliced. They’re neat, but as with all layer cakes, sometimes you don’t feel like baking a really big cake. Enter the Chef Basics Checkerboard Loaf Pan. This pan is new to me and allows you to get that same neat checkerboard design in a loaf cake or bread.

Instead of one single loaf pan, this set comes with what looks like a loaf pan that looks like it has been divided up into three  long, flat sections and a divider. You place your divider into one of the pans, pour in your alternating batter colors, remove that divider and repeat the process with the next pan. The cake holds its shape surprisingly well during baking. You still have to stack these cakes up to finish your presentation, but the small cakes take little time to bake and are very easy to handle (compared to larger cakes that can be more fragile). The finished cake has a great look to it and, although I like the look of the classic checkerboard cake, seeing the pattern in a cake that is itself rectangular has a lot of appeal to it, too.