EASY 6-LAYER RAINBOW CAKE

EASY 6-LAYER RAINBOW CAKE

INGREDIENTS
For the cake

• 350g self raising flour
• 3tsp baking powder
• 350g soft soft unsalted butter
• 350g caster or light brown caster sugar
• 6 large free range eggs (I tend to go for happy eggs)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• up to 40ml semi-skimmed milk

For the frosting

• 100g butter, soft
• 250g cream cheese, at room temperature
• 600g icing sugar, sifted

INSTRUCTIONS
For the cake

First, preheat your oven to gas mark 4/170 degrees/360 degrees Fahrenheit and mix up your cake batter in the usual way - cream your butter and sugar until combined, add eggs one at a time followed by a little of the flour and mix well before adding remaining flour, baking powder and vanilla extract. If your mix is a little thick as mine was, add up to 40ml of semi-skimmed milk - adding a tablespoon at a time and stopping when you get to a consistency that you're happy with.

Next, divide your mix into 6 bowls (including your original bowl) to do your colours. I divided my mix by eye, not bothering to weigh my mixture and divide it exactly equally.
Drizzle on some of your red gel colour and mix in. Keep adding and mixing a little until you have the vibrant shade you want. Its actually very hard to go overboard with gel colours, but don't add too much at once (not more than a quarter of a teaspoon). Ten minutes and an aching arm later, you'll have a beautiful rainbow of cake batters!

Pop them into the oven and keep a close eye on them - you don't want them to get browned. I rotated my cakes on the oven shelves throughout the cooking time (mine took around 20 minutes total), taking them out as soon as a skewer to the centre came out clean.
When your cakes are cool, preferably wrap them in clingfilm and pop them into the fridge for a day (or freeze if following my ideal timeline).

For the frosting
Follow my foolproof method for thick cream cheese frosting.

When all the icing sugar is incorporated, pop the frosting into the fridge to chill. As with the cakes, ideally, do this the day before you want to decorate the cakes.

To assemble

Put a little of the cream cheese frosting on the plate or cake stand you'll be using to adhere the first layer of cake. Pop it onto the centre of the plate, and then frost and put on the next layer. Careful not to use too much frosting, as the weight of the cake will push it out the sides of the cake- just a thinnish layer is best. After the first three layers, put the cake into the fridge for thirty minutes to chill.

Continue stacking the cake, taking care to position the layers as evenly as possible, so that the sides of the cake are as straight as they can be.
Apply a crumb coat of frosting to the cake, filling any gaps between layers. The colours of the cake will be very apparent, but don't worry. Chill for 1 hour.
Apply a second coat of frosting. Chill for 1 hour.
Apply a third coat of frosting. Chill until set.Enjoy!

Easy Rainbow Cake From Scratch

Easy Rainbow Cake From Scratch

Ingredients

• 2½ cups white granulated sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ¼ cup heavy whipping cream
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• Food coloring: red, yellow, blue, green
• 12 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1½ cups butter, softened (do not melt)
• 6 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 F.
Generously grease and flour 6 (9-inch cake pans.) I only had 3 pans so I had to bake in two rounds.
In a large bowl cream together sugar and butter.
Mix in eggs until thoroughly incorporated.
Mix in vanilla extract, buttermilk and heavy cream.
Mix in half of the flour, baking powder, and salt.
When mixture is combined, mix in the rest of the flour.
Divide the batter into six bowls (about 1 cup of batter per bowl)
Add food coloring to each bowl to create a vibrant red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. (see note on how to make colors)
Pour each colored batter into the prepared pans and spread out into an even layer. (layers will be thin)
Bake for 10-15 minutes or until center is set. Do not overbake. Keep a close eye on them as some ovens run hotter and these are thin layers.
Remove from oven and let cakes cool in the pan until pans are warm enough to touch.
Run a spatula around the edges of the pans to loosen the cake and then very carefully remove the cakes from the pans.
Place on a cooling rack and cool completely.
Meanwhile make the cream cheese frosting by creaming together cream cheese and butter.
Mix in powdered sugar and vanilla.
Place the violet layer down first and frost. Followed by the blue layer, green layer, yellow layer, orange layer and finally the red layer. (frost between each layer)
Place a thin coat of the icing on the cake to create a crumb coat. This will make the cake even all around and seal any loose crumbs.
Once the crumb coat is set, finish frosting the cake.
Slice & serve!
(To create more defined layers of frosting between the colors, place the frosted cake in the fridge to allow the cream cheese frosting to firm up before slicing). Enjoy!

Rainbow Layer Cake

Rainbow Layer Cake

Ingredients

Cake:

• 2 vanilla cake mix
• 2cups water
• 1cup vegetable oil
• 6eggs
• 2packages (2.7 oz each) classic gel food colors

Buttercream Frosting:

• 1cup shortening
• 1cup butter, softened
• 1bag (2 lb) powdered sugar
• 2teaspoons vanilla
• 3to 4 tablespoons milk

Directions

1 Heat oven to 350°F. Spray 3 (8-inch) round cake pans with cooking spray.
2 In large bowl, beat cake mix, water, oil and eggs with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, then on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Divide batter evenly among 6 small bowls, about 1 1/3 cups each.
3 Using food colors, tint batter in 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).
4 Refrigerate 3 colors of batter until ready to bake. Pour remaining 3 colors of batter into cake pans.
5 Bake 18 to 20 minutes or until cake springs back when touched lightly in center and begins to pull away from side of pan. Cool 10 minutes. Remove from pans to cooling racks; cool completely.
6 Wash cake pans. Bake and cool remaining 3 cake layers as directed.
7 In large bowl, beat shortening and butter with electric mixer on medium speed until light yellow. On low speed, gradually beat in powdered sugar. Beat in vanilla. Add milk, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until frosting is smooth. Beat on high speed until light and fluffy.
8 Trim rounded tops off cakes to level, if needed. On serving plate, place purple cake layer. Spread with frosting to within 1/4 inch of edge. Repeat with blue, green, yellow, orange and red cake layers. Spread light coat of frosting on top and side of cake to seal in crumbs, then frost with remaining frosting.Enjoy it!

SURABAYA RAINBOW CAKE

SURABAYA RAINBOW CAKE
INGREDIENTS

• Vegetable shortening 
• 3 cups all-purpose flour 
• 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon 
• salt 2 sticks 
• (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature 
• 2 1/3 cups sugar 
• 5 large egg whites, room temperature 
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 
• 1 1/2 cups milk, room temperature 
• Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple gel food coloring 
• Lemony Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Instruction

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush six 9-inch-round cake pans (or as many 9-inch cake pans as you have, reusing them as necessary) with shortening. Line bottom of each cake pan with parchment paper; brush again and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar. Slowly add egg whites and mix until well combined. Add vanilla and mix until fully incorporated. Add flour mixture and milk in two alternating additions, beginning with the flour and ending with the milk. Mix until well combined.

Divide batter evenly between six medium bowls. Add enough of each color of food coloring to each bowl, whisking, until desired shade is reached. Transfer each color to an individual cake pan. Transfer to oven and bake until a cake tester inserted into the center of each cake comes out clean, about 15 minutes (working in batches if necessary).

Remove cakes from oven and transfer to a wire rack; let cool for 10 minutes. Invert cakes onto a wire rack; re-invert and let cool completely.

Using a serrated knife, trim tops of cakes to make level. Place four strips of parchment paper around perimeter of a serving plate or lazy Susan. Place the purple layer on the cake plate. Spread a scant 1 cup buttercream filling over the first layer with a small offset spatula so it extends just beyond edges. Repeat process with blue, green, yellow, and orange layers.

Place the remaining red layer on top, bottom-side up. Gently sweep away any loose crumbs with a pastry brush. Using an offset spatula, cover the top and sides with a thin layer of frosting (also use any of the excess frosting visible between the layers). Refrigerate until set, about 30 minutes.

Using an offset spatula, cover cake again with remaining frosting.

RAINBOW CAKE

RAINBOW CAKE
Ingredients

• 125g butter, softened, plus a little extra for greasing
• 225g plain flour
• 150g golden caster sugar
• 3 medium eggs (very important to use the correct size)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• edible food colouring - red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, plus optional pink (see below)
• For the icing
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 x 250g tubs cream cheese or mascarpone
• 350g icing sugar

Instructions

Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease 2 x 20cm round sandwich tins and line the bases with baking parchment. Tip all the sponge ingredients, apart from the food colouring, into a mixing bowl, then beat with an electric whisk until smooth.
Working quickly, weigh the mixture into another bowl to work out the total weight, then weigh exactly half the mixture back into the mixing bowl. Pick 2 of your colours and stir a little into each mix. Keep going until you are happy with the colour – the colour of the batter now will be very similar to the finished cake, so be brave! Scrape the different batters into the tins, trying to spread and smooth as much as possible – but try not to waste a drop of the batter – a rubber spatula will help you. Bake on the same oven shelf for 12 mins until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.
Gently turn the cakes out onto a wire rack to cool. Wash the tins and bowls thoroughly, and start again from step 1
– this time using another 2 colours. Unless you’re making the optional pink layer, repeat one more time to get 6 sponges, all of different colours. Leave them all to cool.
To make the icing, very briefly beat the vanilla and cream cheese or mascarpone with an electric whisk until smooth. Sift in the icing sugar and gently fold in with a spatula. Be careful – the more you work it, the runnier it will get, increasing the chance of splitting.
Smear a little icing on your cake stand or plate – just a splodge to stick the first sponge. Start with the red, then spread with some icing right to the very edge. Repeat, sandwiching on top the orange, yellow, green, blue and finally purple sponges. Spread the remaining icing thickly all over the sides and top of the cake. For more tips and expert advice on how to create the perfect rainbow cake, check out our tips, below.