This is a story about a girl on a mission. A mission that involved a failure and then a success with rainbow cake (and bad pictures, sorry, again - my good camera will be back soon!).
I saw a rainbow cake on a
blog a few weeks ago. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I don't make cake very often because it is always too much for two people to eat on our own, but for some reason I really wanted to make this. I didn't have the kind of pan I needed and didn't really feel like spending $20 on a pan I would hardly ever use, so I gave up on the idea. Later that week I was at a thrift store and saw the kind of cake pan that you need but stupidly didn't buy it because by then I had talked myself out of making a cake just for the two of us (curse you, baby weight!). Later that night my husband told me that we were having the missionaries over for dinner the next day. Suddenly I had more people to help us eat the cake! The next morning I went back to the store hoping the pan was still there, which it was, so I took it as a sign that the cosmos wanted me to finally make my cake, diet or no-diet, so I bought it ($3.99!) and took it home.
You are supposed to use one white cake mix and divide it into bowls, dye the batter, and pour it into the pan. I
seriously underestimated how much time it was going to take to divide and dye the batter. I suddenly looked at the clock, did a little calculating about how much time I had before our guests arrived, remembered that I only had one oven, realized that at the rate I was going I was only going to have cake to serve for dinner, stopped making the cake and started making meatloaf and
Pioneer Woman mac and cheese while Lincoln had a meltdown instead. I was feeling really frazzled and super unimpressed with my housewifely abilities.
After I had made sure that there would be dinner when the guests arrived I went back to the cake. I figured it could bake while they were here. I found that after I had taken out the required amounts for the colored batter I didn't have very much plain white batter left. When I poured it into the pan it didn't even cover the bottom. I frantically searched my pantry for another white cake mix but, of course, there wasn't one. I was worried about how the cake was going to look, so literally twenty minutes before my guests arrived I grabbed Lincoln and ran to the grocery store, bought another mix, made it, and poured the batters into the pan. Our guests arrived, Scooter got home and I served dinner. On the way into the dining room I put the cake in the oven.
About 40 minutes later I anxiously went over to the oven to look at how the cake was doing. I opened the door and saw that the batter in the pan had swirled together. Then I realized that there was
batter in the pan not
cake. The oven wasn't on. I served Fudgsicles and stale ice cream left over from Christmas (I know, who keeps ice cream for that long, right?) for dessert. I baked the cake anyway because I was interested to see how it would look. I was so disappointed when I took it out that I promptly threw it away. The next morning I thought I would take pictures, so it's in the trash.
And now, the really poor quality blurry pictures (curse this camera!) of a really ugly cake. The pretty version is up next.
My sister, Lauren, came to visit and was going to be here over St. Patrick's Day so I thought it would be a good chance to try again (especially since she has an iPhone which takes better pictures than my little video camera). This time we didn't try to rush and we made it over a few days. We learned from the earlier failure and made some changes to the directions that I was following from the original blog.
Here's what you do. It takes two boxes of white cake mix, so mix both of those up. Now get six small bowls and divide and color the batter. According to this chart.
Red - 7 oz (3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp)
Orange - 6 oz (3/4 cup)
Yellow - 5 oz (1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp)
Green - 4 oz (1/2 cup)
Blue - 3oz (1/4 cup+ 2 Tbsp)
Purple - 2oz (1/4 cup)
It takes way more food coloring than you think. I used mostly gel coloring, but also used a little bit of the liquid stuff toward the end because it was easier to control the color changes. I found when I made my first cake that it is hard to make the red and orange look different from each other. My advice for this would be to make the orange closer to a pastel orange so it has a lot of contrast to the red. I would also use the no-taste red food coloring if you have it because it really takes a lot to make it red. I didn't have any and was nervous that I was adding so much that the cake was going to start tasting weird, so mine was really more like a dark pink.
The next step is to pour it into the angel food cake pan, which has been really thoroughly greased and floured. The first time I made it I just used small spoons and dripped it into the pan because I didn't want to go through the hassle of doing a more elaborate method. The second time I put the batter into sandwich bags and cut the corner off so I could pipe it into the pan -it was so much easier. Put the baggie into a paper cup while you spoon the batter in. Make sure the hole in the corner is really small because it makes it a lot easier to control the batter as it is coming out. First cover the bottom of the pan with a thin layer of white batter. Then you put each layer in a smaller ring on top of the other layers leaving the first color showing on both sides of the ring. I found it helpful to make sure the first ring you put into the pan, the red, almost fills the bottom of the pan or else you might run out of room and it will be hard to squeeze all the other layers in. Last you put 2 tablespoons of the original white over the purple. You could probably skip the last bit of white if you want because you will probably end up cutting it off later when you level your cake. I did.
Once you've got it in the pan bake it at a lower temperature for longer than the cake mix box says. I did mine at 325 degrees for about an hour and ten minutes, but I would start checking it at about an hour.
Let the cake cool completely. I waited at least four hours. Level the cake once it is very very cool. I used a serrated bread knife which worked well. I wish I'd have cut more off of mine so it was totally level, but since I hadn't seen the inside I was worried about cutting the purple completely off, but it turns out that I could have cut a lot more off.
Flip the cake over onto a plate or cake stand and frost it.
See how it isn't quite sitting level on the plate? I should have cut more off.
Hold your breath and cut into it!
Obviously, I was thrilled. I'm such a dork.
Behold! A rainbow!
And a new Plowman family St. Patrick's Day tradition is born! Huzzah!
