Checkerboard Cake

When I discovered this checkerboard cake pan set, I knew that I had to pick it up!  It looked like so much fun!  I happened to have a coupon at the time I found it at Joann's so I grabbed it.  The cake pan sat there in the kitchen, mocking me for about a month until I finally had some free time to actually pull it out and use it!
When the day finally came to make the cake, I decided to let the boy help me out too.  He had a great time mixing up the cake batter and helping me pour it into each of the pans.  I let him pick the colors to do for the cake.  He picked one of the color combos that was shown on the box...yellow, pink and purple.  He wanted an easter cake!  I think it turned out pretty well for the first attempt at using it.  I definitely see it getting used quite a bit in the future.
It takes 3 boxes of cake mix, so it makes quite a bit.  I did each box in a separate bowl, so that I didn't need to divide it out for each of the colors after the fact.  One of these days, I'm going to find a recipe so I can make cakes from scratch.  Until then, boxed mixes work just fine for me!  To make each color, I used my icing colors...just a little bit goes a long way!  Food coloring will work in a pinch too, but that has a tendency to make the cake batter a lot thinner consistency.  In order to keep the batter from seeping under the ring divider, you want to keep it fairly thick.  The most challenging part was putting the batter in each section of the divider while it was in the pan.  I'd read reviews of people putting the batter in bags and piping it in, but pouring it slowly from the bowl worked pretty well for me too.  There was enough batter left to make a dozen cupcakes as well.  We certainly had our fill of cake in our house for a week or so!
I made a double batch of icing in order to have enough to put between each layer and cover the cake.  I've discovered that I prefer to make my own icing over buying the cans from the store.  It just tastes so much better!
For an experiment to see how to use the cake pan, I was pretty pleased with the end result.  I can't wait to make it again sometime (and for someone other than just my family to eat) and see the expressions on people's faces when they cut into the cake!  It's a lot of fun!