Ideas? My son the chess-player wants to take a treat to the last Chessclub meeting of the year on Tuesday. He suggested a chessboard cake, but of course it would need to be accurate–couldn’t just sketch a few squares on a cake and stick on a plastic chess piece or two, naturally.
I made the mistake of googling chessboard cake images and immediately felt like a loser and a bad mom when I saw all the cakes that look like they cost $500 and were hand-sculpted for a television show. 
No thanks.
So…I could do brownies, which are flatter and easier to ice, if I leave them in the pan. But I’m wondering about something savory–it would be so easy to make a chessboard design from cheese, etc.
I don’t know, just looking for inspiration and ideas…
What about these un-frosted brownies? I realize you probably don’t have enough time to find cookie cutters in the shape of chess pieces, but you could at least do the board itself by alternating white and chocolate brownies. If you could find chess piece cookie cutters, you could do that in place of the hearts on the link below.
Mini sandwiches, half on white, half on pumpernickel. Your choice of fillings. Or just square cookies, half sugar cookies, half chocolate cookies (or chocolate iced cookies). Bar cookies would probably be easiest.
First, you’re going to need a bunch of prawns…
Can you bake a more simple cake? You could try something like this, with chocolate and white cake instead of mixing your own pastels, of course. Having the checkerboard squares INSIDE looks more impressive than decorating the top, and is actually easier.
This cheese chessboard seems simple enough. Maybe build the board from cheese slices and stacks of crackers instead of those single thick slices in the pic.
You could use green and black olives for the pieces. One high for pawns, two for rooks, two high with top one sliced at an angle for bishop, etc.
The easiest would probably be a rice crispie bar sheet topped with melted chocolate in a chessboard design.
After much shopping and brainstorming and almost ordering the darn thing, I think we have it! We made a big pan of brownies. We’ll frost them with chocolate frosting, and I found that Hershey’s Bliss candies are flat on the bottom, available in white chocolate, and square! So with some strategic placement, we should be able to do a decent pattern.
A savory chessboard would have been so much easier, I think…I was promoting cream cheese with Triscuits for the checks, but Chessboy likes to volunteer the desserts! I’ll let you know how it turns out,and thanks for all the ideas!