Fat Tuesday: Rainbow Layer Cake

Today is my sweet, fun-loving, adorable, stubborn, blue-eyed baby boy's 4th birthday. He has had a rough go of it lately... a broken leg, a never ending battle over potty training and the whole middle child thing rearing its ugly head. Yet, in the past week or so, he has turned a corner. His cast came off, the potty training beast has been tamed and well, we are working on the middle child thing (two out of three isn't bad). 

To celebrate Ben's 'big boy' status, we are having his official pirate birthday party with the family on Sunday (treasure chest cake and all), but it didn't seem right that he didn't have a cake for his actually birthday too. I mean, you can't have a legit birthday without blowing out some candles. I guess I would have to make two cakes. Oh darn, 'cause I really hate to bake :)

When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted on his birthday, he said a rainbow cake, and then proceeded to sing the rainbow song he learned in school for the next two hours...very loudly. How can they be so annoying and utterly adorable at the same time? Anyway, we are celebrating Ben's birthday rainbow style with this vibrant 7-inch tall rainbow layer cake. I had been wanting to make one of these for awhile, so I was pretty excited with his choice. Thanks, Ben :)

I am almost exclusively a 'from scratch' baker; however, I knew that my white cake recipe would not be able to handle the food coloring and mixing that would be required to get the vibrant colors I needed. Instead I opted for Rebecca Sutterby's popular White Almond Sour Cream Cake recipe. I have had good luck with it when I have used it in the past, and it tastes pretty good. I knew it would work well for this type of cake.

You will need four 6-inch pans for this cake, first dividing the batter equally between four bowls to color, and then pouring it into prepared pans. I used Americolor brand Super Red, Egg Yellow, Sky Blue and a mix of Violet and Regal Purple to color the batter. Use as much or as little color as you desire keeping in mind that the color of your batter stays pretty true to the final color of your baked cake.

While the cakes are in the oven, make your buttercream. I recommend using a recipe that holds color well, otherwise you may have a difficult time getting the colors you are looking for. Since this was for my kids, I opted for an American style buttercream instead of my favorite Swiss Meringue variety.

Once the cakes are out of the oven and cooled, level the tops with a cake leveler or bread knife and start to fill. I typically make a dam of vanilla or chocolate buttercream around the edges of each cake layer before I fill. This is to ensure the filling doesn't seep out of the sides of the cake. However, when you cut into a cake that has one of these dams, you can see it in the sliced piece. Normally, it's not a big deal, but I thought it would take away from the rainbow effect. So, I instead opted to push the filling out to the edges of the cake being very careful not to get any overflow onto the sides.

When the layering is all done, do a quick crumb coat to seal in any crumbs, and stick the cake in the refrigerator until the buttercream is firm to the touch. When it reaches this point, pull the cake out and give it its final coat of buttercream. Stick it back in the refrigerator and let the final coat of buttercream cool for a couple hours in preparation for decorating.

At this point, you can decorate the cake as you choose. Our family is a sprinkle loving bunch. We put them on everything...waffles, pancakes, cereal, doughnuts, ice cream.....whatever. So, it wouldn't be a proper rainbow cake in our family without slathering it in rainbow sprinkles :) I think Ben is going to love it. I will try to post a picture of it sliced after we sing our happy birthdays to Ben!

Happy 4th Birthday Ben! 

It's your day to shine :)