Rainbow birthday cake

It was my daughters 4th birthday last Thursday, and we had a Princess's and Pirates party  yesterday with traditional party games in my mums back garden, the sun was shining, and it it was lots of fun, the children wore  themselves out bouncing on my mums 10ft trampoline, I WANT ONE!

We had a facepainter, which made it for the children. My daughter had a butterfly face then wanted it rubbed off straight away!

I made Sadie a Rainbow cake, this was at her request. Nothing else would do. I have made my two sons they're birthday cakes year after year since they were born, I'm glad I get to keep doing it, it's priceless the look on there faces when I walk in with the cake to sing 'Happy Birthday'! My eldest son is 16 next month, and I've told him straight NO MORE cakes, he has just left school for goodness sake! Sometimes they don't want to grow up......

Ta Dah!!

This is how I made it:

I usually use a 6 x 6 cake mix

6oz  SF flour
6 oz caster sugar
6 oz butter
2 tsp baking powder
3 Large eggs
Milk to loosen mixture
1tsp vanilla extract

I used 14 x 14 so I had lots of cake mix



Sift the flour from a height into a large bowl, then add remaining ingredients else into a large bowl and whisk everything on high with an electric whisk, for a couple of minutes, add some milk in to loosen the mix up, it should drop off the spoon, fairly easily,It makes for a lighter sponge if the mix isn't to claggy and thick.

I then divided my mix into 7 plastic bowls, into which I added my gel colours, these are brilliant, more intense than the cheaper liquid types. I buy mine from a cake suppliers, you only need the basic primary colours as it's easy to make up other colours, by mixing them. You only use the tiniest smidge.

Gel colours

Spoon a very thin layer of  each colour of cake mix into a greased lined 6 inch cake tin, spread out as evenly as you can, and bake two at a time, or more if you have more cake tins, or a bigger oven at Gas 4 for 15 mins or so, take out when firm to the touch. Turn out carefully and cool on a wire rack.

You will end up with 7 cakes like this:

Stack

I made these a week in advance and cling filmed each one and froze, and took them out the day before decorating.

Decorating day:

I sliced the cakes down to make them a little thinner and even them up, or I would have ended up with a cake too tall! I took heed Sue ;) {fellow blogger}

I then started layering them up on a foil cake stand spreading each layer alternately with vanilla buttercream recipe and method  here and strawberry jam {I made a huge batch of buttercream and still had some left which I froze, it's always fine when you defrost, if you whip it well, it will all come good again.

A work in progress

Finally spread loads of buttercream onto your cake and try to get a smooth even layer all the way down to the sides, easier to achieve with a proper icing spatula, which I didn't have so used a normal cutlery knife.

Here is the end result!




I just finished it off with some sprinkles, silver balls and edible glitter. The most annoying thing is, you go to all this trouble and you can't see the result until you cut into it, which was an exciting moment for me, I was very pleased!

I decorated this the day before the party{ you do NOT want to be attempting this on the day of the party unless you are completely mad} and stored it in the fridge overnight, you will have to take a shelf out though, stored next to my wine ;)

Pass the parcel



Stick the tail on the donkey

The children all went home with smiley faces,  an animal balloon provided by the facepainter and a party bag with a slice of cake, a lollypop some bubbles and a balloon, I don't believe in buying gifts for loot bags.

Finally, my lovely little girly enjoying her cake:)

Sticky fingers