Rainbow Layer Cake!

My aunt, Twyla, planned a surprise birthday for both my cousins this past weekend.  They've been in the process of building a mansion of a house just outside of Saskatoon, and it's almost complete. Her brothers were coming into town to try help out a bit, so she thought it was a great opportunity to throw a bit of a party, since most of the family would be here.

My mum, in the plans, offered my services to make a cake for Tat's, the younger of Twyla's two kids. Kaelan already had a cake ready to go, but Twyla wanted one for Tats as well.

I was originally just going to do a simple angel food cake and decorate the crap out of it, but I decided to try something a little bit more fun and a little bit more complicated! Both Tats and Kaelan are autistic, and Tats in particular absolutely loves colour - her room is painted 4 different colours, if that gives you an idea.

I've seen rainbow cakes on Pinterest and Stumbleupon for the last couple years, and have been dying for an opportunity to try it out. This was the perfect opportunity - something fun, something that Tats had probably never seen, something really special!

I would have loved to make the whole thing from scratch, but it's already so much work and so very time consuming, so I cheated and bought 2 boxes of cake mix. Eventually, I want to invest in good quality vegetable food colouring, to use for all sorts of things, like baking and homemade play dough and chalk, as Jaxson gets older. However, they are really expensive, and i'm not sure how vibrant they are, so I bought a box of gel food colouring. That's what all the recipes recommend, and they are nice and bright - I actually liked them a lot more than I was expecting!

I made the whole thing at my mum's place, because we were planning on leaving from here the next morning to head up to Twyla's new house for the festivities! And I really wanted to transport this thing as little as possible!

Tons of ingredients and steps!

Before I go into details, I just have to say that this was a huge project - it was tons of fun, but it took me all afternoon. I was really impressed with Jaxson - he was so patient and good and played by himself for most of it, before drifting into his afternoon nap!

For the icing, I decided to make a cream cheese buttercream icing for in between the layers, and then I covered the whole cake in an easy, fluffy marshmallow icing from my childhood.

This is how I kept Jaxson busy while I was making the cream cheese buttercream icing!

Best baby EVER!

I made the buttercream icing first so that I could freeze it in layers to make it easier to stack the next morning. I traced the bottom of one of the round pans I was using on parchment paper and copied that 5 times. I then spread the icing on, making it a little smaller than the size of the pan, so the icing wouldn't overflow between each layer of the cake. Then I stacked the 5 icing layers and stuck them in the freezer overnight.

The Recipe:

1 cup butter, at room temperature
A pinch of salt
3 tbsp cream cheese
1/4 cup milk
1 1/4 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Cream the butter, salt and cream cheese. Slowly add the milk and icing sugar, alternating. Add the vanilla and whip till stiff.

Buttery yum-ness!

Next, I mixed the cake according to the instructions on the box and separated it into 6 bowls.

All the batter, split into 6 bowls - about 1 3/4 cups each.

From there, I dyed each one a different colour. I was originally going to do the colours of the rainbow, but as I got started, I decided to just do Tats' favourite colours.

Thick gel colouring

This step took almost an hour, because I had to mix each bowl individually, and for most of them, had to keep adding dye little by little until I got the right hue. The red was the most frustrating; I had to use so much dye to get it as vibrant as I wanted, and so it took the longest! And poor Jaxson, I took so long with this step, he started getting frustrated and wanting attention, so he decided to open as many drawers as he could! I had to stop a number of times and rush to him to confiscate items - mainly wipes, which he has discovered he can take out of the box and throw all over the living room!

After finally finding the right colours, I baked them two at a time (I only bought two 8in round pans), wiping the pans out well between batches. I was really impressed that the colours stayed true, even after baking! There was very little difference, and i'm excited to see what this cake will look like cut into!

You can really see my handprint in this one, from taking it out of the pan!

It was right as I put the first two in the oven that Jaxson decided it was nap time and walked over to me (yes, he's walking everywhere now) and 'asked' to be picked up. I nursed him for about 5 minutes, and put him in his play pen and he was out in minutes! I couldn't ask for a better son! Perfect timing, as this is the only time sensitive part and I was a little worried about overcooking the cake!

I baked them for about 16 minutes each, and that was perfect! They came out soft and spongey! I was really happy with them.

I let them cool completely and then wrapped them individually in saran wrap and stuck them in the fridge for assembly the next morning.

These steps alone took about 2.5 hours.

The following morning, things went a lot quicker than I was expecting!

I cut the tops off the cake layers, to level them and stacked them on my new cake caddy, alternating with the frozen buttercream icing!

The final layer!

Freezing the icing worked really well for this step - it was easy to just peel off the parchment paper and plop the icing down on the cake layers!

I ended up pushing 4 straws through the stacked cake, to keep it upright, and then just snipping off the extra. I'm glad I did this! Transporting it in the car was a little bumpy, and without those straws, i'm sure it would have fallen down!

I next made the marshmallow icing. This icing is a favourite of mine from growing up and having angel food cakes for birthdays! It's light and fluffy, incredibly easy to spread on a fragile cake, and it tastes amazing!

Fluffy goodness! It also has a beautiful shine to it that looks amazing on the cake!

I iced the cake at my mum's before we left, but waited to decorate it at Twyla's.

In hindsight I wish I hadn't iced it till we were ready to serve it. On our way to Twyla's, it melted a bit... :-(

Decorated, looking a little droopy, unfortunately.

It still tasted amazing, and while the outside didn't look as good as I wanted it to, the layers were really cool and got a lot of oohs and ahhs!

Fun layers!

I have to be honest, I was pretty proud of myself for pulling this off - it looked great on the plate, and Tats was really happy with it. It also tasted amazing!

Tats was stoked!

The night was a big success, relaxed and fun, the cake was a hit, and the night culminated in us cousins singing songs from Frozen and dancing!

Dancing to 'Let it Go' from Frozen