Rainbow Layered Cake!

My wonderful In-Laws were coming to visit us! And it was my Sister-in-laws birthday 2 days after they left, so I decided to celebrate early for her and finally TACKLE (and I do mean tackle!!) the layered rainbow birthday cake! Due to the fact im a perfectionist and would not settle for anything under almost perfect, this cake definitely took its TIME!!!!! 

To make this cake you need to follow the recipe EXACTLY and you can not cut any corners! For me it took about 5 hours to make, only due to the fact I only had 1 cake tin the size I needed! (Plus I had the family day care kids to put to sleep and wake up in the process!) 

*** MAJOR TIP! You MUST use a 20cm round (8inch) Cake tin. It CANT be bigger or smaller as this recipe will not work-unless you have some good maths brains and want to tweak the recipe to fit into a larger cake tin. Standard tins are 22.5cm round (9inch). I could only find 1 cake tin 20cm round from a friend. So if you are LUCKY and happen to find at leased 2 cake tins this size I suggest you BUY THEM BOTH! it will HALF the time of making this cake I PROMISE!!!

**Do not try to cook 2 cakes at once, only have 1  cake in the oven at a time, as it will change the cooking time, and when your baking for this long-you dont want to have to constantly check if the cake is ready-you just want to set the timer and pull it out without checking. 

**I did a test try first with another recipe and that one just isnt as good, thankfully I made that decision after only 2 layers! 

** Make sure you have a good kitchen scales on hand as you will need to WEIGH the ingredients perfectly. 

SO good luck! Enjoy. Its so much fun towards the end, and I must say I was VERY proud of myself when Angela cut open the cake and the rainbow was just perfect! Its a scary moment, because you dont know if you covered it enough in icing and if the cake stays together until the final reveal. But if you follow this recipe perfectly it will be PERFECT!

The Recipe

Because Gods number is 7 and he made the rainbow with 7 colours, it makes it an odd number so unfortunately you will have HALF a batch left at the end. But dont waste it-throw it in little cupcake pattys and make some mini cakes for the kids :) 

YOU WILL NEED TO MAKE 4 BATCHES OF THE FOLLOWING MIXTURE AND HALF EACH BATCH TO MAKE 2 RAINBOW COLOURS EACH TIME.

125g softened butter

225g plain flour

150g golden caster sugar

3 medium free range eggs

3 tbsp buttermilk (aaah, the key to all even bakes)

1/2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

Food colouring 

** Some of the food colours you only need a few drops, but I found when using the standard food dye drops, that making Orange and purple used ALOT of food dye, and took a while to finally get a pretty colour. 

** whatever the raw batch is is pretty much what the cake will be when baked

• Heat your oven to Gas Mark 3 (I had it on fan bake at 160 degrees) and grease 2 x 20cm cake tins, and line with baking parchment. If it is not a spring tin, make sure you line the sides as well as the bottom of the tin, as it makes it super easy to remove later.
• Bung all the ingredients into a mixer and whisk until smooth. Then, tip into a clean bowl and weigh. Split the mixture exactly in two and pick your first two colours of choice.

• Mix in the colours until you’re happy with how dark they are. 
• Spread each coloured mixture as evenly as you can into a tin. Bake for 16 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean from the middle of the cake. They’re pretty thin so don’t take long at all. While they’re baking, make up your next batch of mixture and repeat the above step with new colours.
• Turn the cakes out onto a wire rack and clean down the tins, re-grease and re-line.
• You can leave out the 7th layer if you want, but it meant missing out the pink sponge and I really didn’t want to do that (tragic). You’ll just have to split the final batch of mixture in half and find use for the rest. I think the 7th layer is what makes IT so GOOD!

• While they’re all cooling, it’s frosting time. The recipe I used I found I ran out of icing just a little so I would say use Maybe 925g of light cream cheese and 500g icing sugar would work, along with 1 tsp vanilla extract, but you can judge and taste as you go. Blend these ingredients carefully by hand, ensuring you don’t over-mix as cream cheese goes runny and shiny, which is not what you want.
• ** I found that using the vanilla extract made the icing a yellow colour so I added a tiny bit of blue food dye which made the icing a pretty very pale green. This icing is SO YUM!
• Find a pretty cake stand, smear a dollop of frosting in the middle of said stand, and start stacking! Red first, covered in a layer of frosting, then orange, yellow etc etc. Using a palatte knife (an invaluable tool when icing a cake this big), spread the frosting over the entire cake, filling in any gaps and trying to cover any obvious lines of colour poking through.

** If you are not a good icer, then you can always cover the cake with 100's & 1000's or smarties or anything you want. I found icing the 'rough' look worked well but I added 100's & 1000's on the top to make it pretty look really good. 

** I also made the cake the day before it was the birthday party and iced it on the day, if you choose to do it this way, which I found was a good way, glad wrap each individual cake and put in the fridge.

And thats IT! I put my cake in the fridge, not covered for an hour to allow the icing to dry, then I glad wrapped over it, or put it in a cake tin. 

So much fun!