Tuesday, May 3, 2011

rainbow cake

It's a good thing that Cha's program is not quite school because we get away with bending the no birthday cakes/healthy snacks rules once in a while. Madame Sophie, Cha's teacher is always impressed by the goodies I bring her and the kids, mainly because she's not a baker, not necessarily because of my mad skills.

They were working on colors on Cha's birthday, and when came snack time, Mme Sophie had the kids guess what color the cake was going to be. Little did she know, pretty much every kid was right with their guess!


I've been admiring rainbow cakes from afar for a little while, with Whisk-Kid, Sweetapolita and  The Great Cake Company having made particularly sweet ones, and the last one being the inspiration behind the clever decorating job that was super to hide my less than spectacular icing skills.


I always thought that making one of these would just be so much work (and dishes) but decided to make it anyways. And after finding my new favorite white cake recipe that calls for dirtying just one bowl, the task didn't seem so daunting anymore.

I used 6 inch pans to make the six layers, and I found the amount of batter this recipe yields is just perfect. The layers were thin and baked evenly so I didn't have to trim them to get level layers. I used my kitchen scale to divide the batter evenly between the bowls, added food color, and baked the cakes in two batches, 16 minutes each batch. Let them cool, then stacked them with store bought frosting between the layers. I tried to keep the frosting at an absolute minimum as I didn't want angry moms to be calling me because I'm feeding their kids sugar...

I thought this cake was a good opportunity to practice my frosting skills since I knew I was going to cover it up with sprinkles anyways. I had a great time with the crumb coat. It smoothed out nice, with no gaps or sagging or anything.


But the actual frosting part after I let the crumb coat chill out in the fridge was trickier. Much better than my lemon blueberry cake, but still  not as good as I had hoped. I'm much better at removing frosting from the cake than laying it on. Oh well. I guess I'll have to keep finding ways to hide the icing job until I get better at it!

Then came the tricky part! Covering the side of the cake with sprinkles. I set up over the sink, with a bowl of sprinkles and took handfuls to press onto the cake that I was holding with one hand at an angle. It was pretty effective, but there were sprinkles everywhere! And it took way less sprinkles than I thought. Less than an bottle actually.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this cake. I just wish I had gotten a picture of the inside. I'm sure it was gorgeous and super yummy! And thankfully, this was the last of Charlotte's three cakes for her forth birthday! Ooof!

21 comments:

  1. Jaime from The Great Cake Company dropping in to say you rocked the rainbow cake! I love it, and I can't decide which version I like better... the one with colored filling as part of the rainbow, or white filling with only the rainbow cake. I am going to have to try your way next time to know for sure. Nice work, and thanks for mentioning me :)

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  2. Hey, Robin said he had cake at school for Cha's BD. I asked him if it was good.. he said: "Oh yeah... best cake ever!"

    ;)

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  3. What a happy cake!!! I love all the sprinkles too!!! The rainbow cakes must be popular right now because two of the blogs I read have them on there today!!!
    http://mykentuckyhome-kim.blogspot.com/2011/05/rainbow-cake-with-white-chocolate.html

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  4. So fun to see someone else making the rainbow cake too! Your colors are so vivid and I love the sprinkles on the sides. Absolutely gorgeous:) Thanks for the comment!

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  5. Oh that is sooo pretty. You did a great job on the frosting!

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  6. You made this multi-step cake sound so easy! I was going to ask you if you had any tricks for putting sprinkles on the sides of cakes, but you covered that! ** Sigh**They make it look so easy on TV.

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  7. Well I too have been admiring these rainbow cakes from afar for a while now. Your looks so good. Good work with the sprinkles and thanks for sharing how you did that!

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  8. What a lovely cake! I'm sure the birthday girl was thrilled. This is my first visit to your site and I've been browsing through your earlier entries. I really like the food you feature here. You've created a lovely spot for your readers to enjoy and I'll definitely be back. I hope you have a great day. Blessings...Mary

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  9. I'm loving this! Rainbows just make me happy in general but gosh, those colours are so vibrant!

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  10. put your sprinkles on a sheet pan and then press them into the sides as you tilt the cake slightly

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  11. I didn't find a recipe for the rainbow cake.

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  12. where can i find the recipe for the cake itself?

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  13. I put a link to the recipe I used in the post, but I admit that my links aren't very obvious! Here's the recipe for the white buttermilk cake I used: http://bourbonnatrixbakes.blogspot.com/2011/05/strawberry-shortcake-cake.html
    Although you can use any white cake recipe that can tolerate some mixing for the food color. None of that "mix until just combined" stuff :)

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  14. And thanks for the great comments everyone :) Glad you liked the cake!

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  15. I'm so amaze. This one is the ultimate. I enjoy your creativity & keep up the good work. J'adore ce que tu fais. WOW

    Ter

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  16. Yum!! Thanks for finding my blog!! I'm your newest follower! Follow me if you like what you see! :)

    www.epicureanmom.com

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  17. may i know what is the tips to make the perfect edge? i baked before and the edge is brown ...so i need to trim it and then left with lots of crumble, what tin do you use and do uu use partchment paper? thanks alot

    lia

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  18. hi lia. my layers were really thin, so the cake didn't need to bake long. also, the cake recipe i used pulls the cake away from the edges of the pan as it cools. i use light baking pans, and spray them with baking/cooking spray. i used parchment paper on the bottom of the pan only. hope this helps!

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  19. My brother (who has Downs Syndrome) asked for a rainbow cake for his birthday. I googled pictures and came across this blog. Looks brilliant! I'm just wondering where I can find the actual recipe.

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    Replies
    1. I used the white butter milk cake from this post to make this cake : http://bourbonnatrixbakes.blogspot.ca/2011/05/strawberry-shortcake-cake.html

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