Recipe: Rainbow Cake

I haven’t actually baked a cake for a while. It’s something I really enjoy doing and something I definitely want to get better at so there’s only one thing for it – practice! When my friend’s birthday came round I think I’d crack out the cake tins and see what I could do.

I totally forgot to take a photo of it once I’d finished icing it and my cutting skills clearly leave a lot to be desired but you get the idea and you’ll forgive my awful photography yeah? Thanks guys.

I only have two cake tins so I only make up enough cake mix for two layers at a time. I didn’t want the baking powder to start reacting in the bowl while I was waiting for the other layers to bake. This is a really easy cake mix method. I’m always a fan of fling it all in and mix it together cooking where I can.

Recipe

For The Cake

You’ll need three times these amounts for six layers but, like I said before, I made them two at a time using these measurements.

• 125g butter, softened
• 225g plain flour
• 150g caster sugar
• 3 medium eggs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• edible food colouring – red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

I couldn’t get my hands on all these colours so ended up doing two purple layers and a yellow, pink, orange and red layer. I used Classikool neon colours because I wanted them to be really bright but they didn’t really give me the exact shades I was after. Never mind.

For The Frosting

Due to the amount of layers to this cake I used four times this amount of frosting but this is my usual measurements and covers about 12 cupcakes or one 20cm(ish) cake.

• 110g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 250g icing sugar
• 150g white chocolate

How To Make The Rainbow Cake

• Heat oven to 180C.
• Grease and line two 20cm cake tins.
• Put all the cake ingredients, except the food colouring, into a bowl and beat together until smooth.
• Split the cake mix equally into two separate bowls. Some recipes suggest weighing it out but I tend to just go by equal spoonfuls and check if they look about equal by eye.
• Pick two colours and mix a little into each bowl. Keep going until you are happy with the colour. The colour of the batter now will be pretty much the same as the finished cake. (This might sound like a silly thing to add but I didn’t realise, I thought it would fade a lot in the oven.)
• Tip each coloured mix into the cake tins and smooth the tops.
• Bake in the middle of the oven for about 12 minutes until a knife poked in the middle comes out clean.
• Turn out on to a cooling tray.
• Now the boring bit – wash up the tins and bowls and start again.
• Repeat these steps until you have 6 different multicoloured layers.

 

How To Make White Chocolate Frosting

• Beat the butter and half the icing sugar together until smooth. This is the messiest and most time-consuming bit!
• Keep adding the icing sugar bit by bit and beat into a smooth paste.
• Melt the white chocolate. I prefer to use a pan of hot water to melt my chocolate but a microwave is just as good if you keep an eye on it.
• Add the chocolate to the butter and icing sugar mixture and mix until smooth.
• The chocolate might (probably will) change the consistency of the frosting. If it’s too stiff add a little milk a teaspoon at a time. If it’s too runny add a little extra icing sugar. It’s really easily fixable.

 

How To Build Your Rainbow Cake

• Smear a little bit of the frosting on the plate or cake stand to keep the bottom layer in place as you build your cake.
• Start with the red (or whatever colour you’ve decided to go on the bottom) and spread with some icing right to the very edge.
• Repeat with each layer.
• Spread the remaining icing thickly all over the sides and top of the cake.

 

Ta daaa, it only actually takes about an hour/an hour and a half in total to make this cake. It definitely looks a lot more hard work than it really is.

The icing is really quite sweet so I decided against covering the cake with multicoloured sweets like Smarties or M&Ms (I like covering cakes in sweets!) but obviously that’s your choice. I did originally make cream cheese frosting for this cake to make slightly less sweet but the kitchen was really hot and the frosting split so I went for my old trusty white chocolate frosting instead.

Have you made a rainbow cake? Are you going to give it a go? Please let me know if you do and let me see how it turns out for you. Also, let me know if you have any better food colouring suggestions.

Kisses,