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! |
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! |
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. |
Thick gel colouring |
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! |
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! |
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! |
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. |
Fun layers! |
Tats was stoked! |
Dancing to 'Let it Go' from Frozen |
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