Rainbow Cake - Made for Miss two

Written by: Nic

 I wasn’t sure what to do for Miss Two’s birthday cake this year as she isn’t really into anything (unlike last year when she was in love with In The Night Garden). She does really love painting and crafts so I thought she would enjoy a rainbow cake! Now I am no baker, my time is VERY limited and I didn’t want to pay the money to have a cake made, so this is what I did:

Bought 2 cheap cake packet mixes (Roughly $3 each from Aldi) and the ingredients listed on the packet. The night before Miss Two’s birthday I went over to my friend’s house as my oven was  broken, and baked the 6 layers over the next hour or so. Then the next day I constructed and decorated it during nap time.

What you will need:

•2 x 340g packets vanilla sponge cake mix (or double a homemade sponge cake mix)

What my packet also required (this has been doubled for the two packets)

-          6 tblsp/120g Butter Softened

-          330ml milk

-          4 eggs

•Blue, green, yellow, orange, pink and red food colourings

•3 x 7cm-deep (or 4cm-deep), 20cm (base) round cake pans

•Piping bag

•Smarties

•Candle/s

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced.

Grease three 7cm-deep (or 4cm-deep), 20cm (base) round cake pans. The ones with the pop out bottoms are the best!

Line bases and sides with baking paper (it makes it so much easier to get them out).

Prepare the two packets of cake mix following packet directions (or 2 homemade cake if you prefer).

Divide batter evenly among 6 small bowls, about 1 1/3 cups each.

Using food colours, tint batter in small amount, mixing it until you have your desired strength of colour. 1 bowl blue, 1 bowl red, 1 bowl green, 1 bowl yellow, 1 bowl orange (using red and yellow) and 1 bowl purple (using blue and red).

Refrigerate 3 colours of batter until ready to bake. Pour remaining 3 colours of batter into cake pans.

Bake 18 to 20 minutes or until cake springs back when touched lightly in centre and begins to pull away from side of pan. Be careful not to overcook or burn them as they are very thin so don’t require very much cooking time.

Remove from pans to cooling racks; cool completely.

Once all 6 layers of cake are completely cooled, stack them in colour order by placing a sheet of baking paper in between. I went from top to bottom – red, orange, yellow, green, purple and blue.

Refrigerate, covered, until the next day when the cake will be served.

Construction:

Make cream filling/frosting. I used 900ml thickened cream (600ml + 300ml tub), ¼ of caster sugar and a few drops of red food colouring to give the cake a soft pink colouring when finished.

Beat cream, sugar and food colouring until it peaks (you need it to be as think as possible without it being over beaten and lumpy).

Take all the cake layers off the base, with their baking paper still in place. One by one peel off the baking paper and spread cream over the top of each layer. When all the layers are on and in there correct place you can cut and shape the cake to get a more rounded shape by shaving it downwards with a knife.

Now it’s time to cover the whole cake in the rest of the cream, leaving some for pipe decorating. Once all the piping work is done it can be kept in the fridge until very close to serving time (smarties can’t be placed on the cake earlier as they go soggy and loose there colour in the wet cream – that’s what happened to me).

When decorating the cake I chose to put pink smarties around the edge and fill the middle with all the rest. Placed a number 2 candle in the back centre and it was complete!