Grayson's Rainbow Cake

It's been forever since I've posted, I know.  I've been super swamped at work and finishing my friend, Lisa's new website, www.papergrace.com, was my top priority.  But I did take photos while making a birthday cake for David's 5 year-old daughter, Grayson.  Here's David with 2 (Eliana and Grayson) of his 3 youngin's this past saturday.

So May 15th was Grayson's birthday and  I wanted to do something special for her. 

I'd seen the "recipe" for a Rainbow Cake several different places on the interwebz and I thought I would try my hand at it.  I say "recipe" because I used a box cake mix... I know I know...but considering how labor intensive the layers are, I wouldn't do it any other way.  I did, however, make my own buttercream frosting, so that's at least something.

Onto the RAINBOW CAKE!

Go ahead and chuck everything the box says to into your mixer (stand-up or hand held) and just follow the directions.  Easy Peasy.  Literacy = Cooking Ability.

While you're out picking up your boxed cake mix, eggs, etc... make sure to grab the food coloring.  I just went to Wal-Mart and bought some classic gel food coloring from the grocery section.  They also sell them in neon colors, but I wanted a more "traditional" rainbow cake.

Divvy the batter into 4 bowls.  4 bowls for the 4 different color layers.

Now start adding the food coloring to the bowls.  You can use as much or as little as you want.  It just depends on how deep and vibrant you want the colors.

Let me preface the next comment by saying that I'm not much of a baker.  That being said, I only have 2  - 9'' round cake pans, so I had to bake the layers in batches.  If you have 4 cake pans, well bully for you and your baking time will be cut in half. :P  So grease up dem pans good and bake according to the directions on the box.

Red and blue into the oven!

Yellow and green layers coming out of the oven!

The layers MAY brown a little bit on top, like below, but not to worry because you're going to be trimming that off anyway to level the cake.

After the layers come out of the oven, let them cool a little in the pans and then

G E N T L Y work them out.  This is the most nerve-racking part of baking to me.  One wrong move and BOOM!  you're screwed.  So take your time and be careful.

Put them bad boys onto a cooling rack and let cool thoroughly.  Also I would lean back and enjoy your colorful handiwork at this point.  It's so cool!

While the layers are cooling, go ahead and make the buttercream frosting.  I'm not gonna post the recipe because there are a 1000 recipes and the one I just linked to is as good as any and the one I used. 

And yes this frosting is ridiculously bad for you, but hell i f you can't eat a huge, bad-for-you, colorful birthday cake on your fifth birthday, when can you?!

So frosting time:

Cream the butter until smooth and then add the 100,000 lbs. of sifted powdered sugar, salt, milk, and vanilla and again beat until smooth.  And yes a diabetic coma is a distinct possibility while making this frosting.  Just think about carrots or wheat germ or something.

Now I chose to keep the frosting white b/c the cake layers are so colorful.  Plus how boring does a plain, white cake look until you cut into it and HOLY SMOKES!  It's like Timothy Leary died inside my cake!  Truly epic as my gamer-side would say.

So frosting made, cake layers cool.  Let's put this thing together!

STEP ONE:  trim the layer tops as flat as you can without murdering the layer.  It's not too hard, just take your time and a big, serrated knife is a big help.  Save the scraps!  We're gonna throw a little sumpin' sumpin' together with those in a minute.

STEP TWO:  ice the top of your bottom layer with a reasonable amount of frosting. Stack the next layer on top and repeat until all the layers are assembled.

Use the majority of the leftover frosting for the outside of the cake.  This shouldn't be a problem and you will probably ice the whole cake and have a fair amount of frosting leftover.  

What to do with the leftover frosting and all those cake trimmings?  Why not grab an iced tea glass, martini glass, etc... and make a little cake parfait?  Don't worry about them being not the prettiest thing in  town; they'll taste awesome and no one will care.

A few sprinkles and VOILA!  scraps turned into dessert loveliness!

So what's that iced rainbow cake look like, you want to know?  How about this?

The sprinkles.  Oh the sprinkles.  I'm still finding them a month later all over my kitchen...  I recommend putting a dish towel under the whole mess and just go to town with them thar' sprinkles.   Its a good way to take out some frustrations.  But oh the sprinkles...  I even found one on the floor in the backseat of my car today.  That cake was NEVER IN MY CAR!  

And here are the colorful wonderful insides!

So there you have it.  A Rainbow Cake fit for anyone who doesn't want a boring cake.  Here is Grayson blowing out her candles and then a few pics of the girls chowin' down!

Hope to post again soon!  And for my friend Beth, I will be doing a post on searing soon!  Probably some big, fat Yellowfin Tuna steaks with ginger, wasabi and soy sauce!  YUM!!  Oh I think i'll have that for dinner tonight. lol