Rainbow Cake

This is all about the rainbow cake I baked for Kaitlyn's birthday party. Since it took a ridiculously long time to make and I took pictures along the way, it deserves a post of its own.

I got inspired to make a rainbow cake after reading this post by Mrs. Hopscotch on Hellobee. She made it sound so easy, I decided that I needed to try it too. Mrs. Hopscotch pretty much laid out the entire process in her post, including the recipe she used and some tips and tricks, so I'll try not to repeat her.

Similar to Mrs. Hopscotch, I used Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake recipe. I omitted the lemon zest though, as I didn't want the cake tasting too lemony for the kids. This is my go-to cake recipe from now on.

Here is the part where I went crazy. I thought if I doubled the recipe I would have enough batter for six layers using a 9" cake pan. I guess I didn't read Mrs. Hopscotch's blog thoroughly because it turns out she used 8" cake pans. That made a huge difference. It wasn't until after I baked all six layers that I realized how thin the layers were - they were practically burned around the edges. I decided to start all over and triple the quantities instead of doubling them. In one afternoon, I ended up baking twelve layers of cake. 

I only had four mixing bowls so for the first batch, I doubled the recipe and divided evenly among the four bowls. For the second batch, I made a single recipe and divided evenly between two bowls.

I baked two layers at a time. Here is red and orange fresh out of the oven and yellow and green about to go in.

Here is the secret to making perfect, evenly stacked layers: a cake leveler! I didn't even know such a thing existed, but with the help of some YouTube tutorials, a trip to Michael's, and about five bucks, I was able to make some nice, flat layers.

Look at those flat tops!

After leveling the cakes, there were a lot of excess pieces from the tops. I hadn't planned on making cake pops, but it was the perfect use for cake scraps (and I think the kids liked eating them better).

For the buttercream frosting, I tried to find a recipe that didn't involve an obscene amount of sugar, Crisco, or require cooking together sugar and egg whites to make a meringue (I wanted something quick and easy). So after experimenting a bit and tweaking various recipes, I ended up with my own proportions below:

2 sticks butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract

~2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream.

Most recipes call for at least 3x the amount of sugar, but I found that a 1:1 butter/sugar ratio makes it just sweet enough but not too sweet. The clear vanilla extract is also important, to keep the frosting nice and white. Otherwise you end up with a yellow tint in the frosting, which isn't that bad, but I really wanted a pure white frosting.

I suck at frosting cakes, but similar to Mrs. Hopscotch, I followed this tutorial for some tips on getting a nice smooth layer. 

The fun part - stacking the layers.

Laying on the crumb coat.

Six sticks of butter and six cups of sugar later...a completely frosted cake! This was as smooth as I could get it.

The downside of making this cake is that you can't see what it looks like until it's time to cut into it. I was so eager to cut into this cake and see the final product.

Pretty!

Overall, I was very pleased with the way the cake turned out, and it was totally worth all the extra effort to bake six (or in my case, twelve) layers of cake. Aside from messing up the first batch, the entire process wasn't too bad, and I actually had a lot of fun making this. It was also fun eating leftover cake for an entire week after the party!