Rainbow Cake

I made this cake for my blogs first birthday and as promised, here is the recipe!  I’ve been itching to make one of these cakes for ages!  They look so unassuming from the outside until they are cut into and people gasp and say “wow!”

I baked my cakes in three batches of two.  I didn’t want to put more than two in my oven at a time due to space and I wanted them cooking evenly. 

Altogether you will need:-

570gr unsalted butter

570gr caster sugar

9 eggs

3tsp vanilla extract

570gr self raising flour

3tsp baking powder

Food colouring (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)

Buttercream Icing

300gr butter

700gr icing sugar

1, For each batch (two cakes) you want to cream together 190gr of butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.

2, Beat in three of the eggs along with 1tsp of vanilla extract

3, Sift in 190gr of the flour along with 1tsp of the baking powder

4, Fold this until just combined.  Don’t mix too much at this stage.  

5, Divide the batter into two bowls and add food colouring to each.  Bear in mind that the colour of the cake will be brighter than the batter but make them as bright as possible without overbeating.

6, Pour each batter into a greased or lined 7inch sandwich tin and bake in a preheated oven at 170o/c for 25 minutes

7, Cool the cakes and make the next two batches in the same way.

8, When you have all six cakes cooled and ready to be iced , trim all the cakes to a six inch diameter and make sure they are level using a cake leveller or a knife and a steady hand. 

9, Make one batch of butter cream icing by beating 150gr of butter until really pale and light then fold in 350gr icing sugar with a couple of teaspoons of milk and a couple of drops of vanilla extract.  If you want a really white butter cream add the tinest bit of blue food colouring and beat well.  I used a skewer to add the food colouring.  It’ll offset some of the yellow tinge. 

10, Use this batch to spread a small layer of icing between each cake

11, Whip up the next batch and give the cake a thin crumb coating.  Pop it in the fridge for a couple of hours so the crumb coat sets so your final ice will be all lovely and crumb free.

12, Remove the cake from the fridge and apply the rest of the icing to the cake using an offset spatula.  I swirled the top and then used a dessert spoon to lightly drag up the surface of the butter cream to create the stripes. 

13, Leave for a couple of hours in a cool place so the butter cream sets a little before cutting

14, This is a seriously large cake.  You have been warned.  Eight of us had a go at it and it beat us.  It beat us bad.  There was over half of it left.  And we all really love cake…