Brown-Eyed Susan Cake

Cakes inspired by the garden became something of a trend in the ’50s. Cookbooks are littered with confectionary odes to the chrysanthemum and pink azalea. Most sound pretty awful, but Brown-Eyed Susan Cake combines chocolate and orange flavored cake batters to great effect. We wanted to update this old-fashioned recipe and make it for our next garden party. Here’s what we discovered:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• Go ahead and use your favorite box mix or recipe for yellow cake. Divide one batch of batter between two bowls. Flavor one bowl of batter with melted chocolate and the other with orange zest.
• Prepare two round cake pans and drop the batter by the spoonful into the pans, alternating between the orange and chocolate batters. The resulting cake will have a loose checkerboard pattern of orange and chocolate.
• Prepare one batch of buttercream frosting and, as with the cake, divide it into two bowls and flavor one with chocolate and one with orange. Ice the sides and middle with chocolate frosting; save the orange for the top. Make chocolate chip and candied orange peel “flowers” across the top.