Day 177: Rainbow Cake

Alright, where to begin:  First and foremost- this craft was WAYYY too ambitious!  I started this at about 12:30 today and we finally got to eat it at 6 tonight.

First, I found a picture of a rainbow cake that I REALLY wanted to make, so I figured out how to make it... everything says "2 boxes of vanilla cake mix" but i didn't have vanilla cake mix, so I had to make a cake from scratch.. thankfully, i always have cake flour on hand... I found this recipe for the vanilla cake, and I will absolutely use it again: http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/buddy-valastros-vanilla-cake/  The only thing I will say is that to make a rainbow cake, you need to actually make THREE 9 inch round cakes, and the recipe only made 2... so I made 1.5x the recipe.  If i can multiply it and make it come out right, i am sure you can :)  After the first step, the cake mix looked like crumbles.  I was adding the 4th egg before it suddenly started looking like a cake mix.  So, don't get discouraged!  The kids love pouring everything in and helping with the mixer- love my Kitchen Aid mixer!!!

Then, i had to split the batter into 6 even amounts... i'll do the hard part for you, it is approximately 1.5 cups plus 1.5T per bowl... well, at least it worked.

Then we had to dye it.. i used gel food coloring.. the only color i wasn't happy with was the red.  Any bakers out there that can give me a suggestion on how to make the red brighter???  The girls were fascinated with the process, they fought over who would hand me the tooth picks to mix the food coloring in and Iris wanted to help blend it in.

Then the long part:  I baked 2 "cakes" at a time for approximately 13-14 minutes each at 350*.  Then, I had to let them cool for a little bit, turn them out, clean the pans, re butter and flour the pan and start all over again.

It took TWO cans of whipped icing to cover the cake, and that was a JUST BARELY covered.  But, we threw some rainbow sprinkles on the top and enjoyed.  It did turn out very pretty.