Revamping Recipes: Rainbow Cake

This Thursday is one of my roommates’ 21st birthday and it’s also my mom’s birthday today, so I decided to whip her up a delicious rainbow cake. I have seen this done a couple different ways in both a multi-layer form and a double-layer form. I decided to go with the double-layer form because I didn’t have any cake pans, so I had to buy disposable ones (which means less money when there are fewer layers) and also because there are only four people living in this apartment and I didn’t want to have to eat the whole thing by myself. I hate wasting food and did not want all my step aerobics and pilates to go to waste.

I started with:

Then I followed the recipe on the back of the cake box but doubled everything. I did not use the weight watchers diet soda trick because I had no clue how that would taste. I don’t like to switch things up when I’m making food for other people. I’ll eat pretty much anything, but I doubt my roommates are the same.

Then I separated it into bowls and added the food color gel. The only colors I could find were more like pastel colors than the rainbow cakes I got the recipe from, but I actually kind of liked the shades because they were more college-friendly and less like Crayola colors. They still turned out to be vibrant.

Then I poured some of each color into a pan and did it in the opposite order in the other. I didn’t measure, I just eyeballed it, which worked fine. Side note – I only used rectangular cake pans because they didn’t have any round ones at Target. Bummer.

After baking them I was really worried that the colors didn’t work, but I soon learned that the outer part of the cakes were brown, but the insides were gorgeous.

I had never made a double layer cake before and I didn’t have a cake stand, so I had to leave one in the pan and stack the other on top. It was hard to cut the bottom layer so that it was flat, but my roommates forgave me for the lumpiness. I also got a little frosting-happy and didn’t wait long enough to start adding the frosting which ended up in little pieces of the cake mixing in. I almost gave up at one point, but I figured if I messed up that bad I could just serve the other half and scarf down throw away send the other half to starving children.

I was really mad at myself for not putting aluminum foil or parchment paper under the top layer so it would be easy to move. I had to tip the pan and slide aluminum foil underneath. Luckily, it worked, but it was a scary process! Once I got in on to the bottom layer it wasn’t centered completely, but it was stuck. Oh well, we all learn!

And the final product:

Everyone loved it, so I am happy! It tasted really good and the colors make it so much fun. Every slice is different. I will definitely make this again. I think it’s good for people of any age because it makes people feel happy and youthful!

What’s your favorite kind of cake? Any tips? My boyfriend, San, is actually a certified pastry chef who went to Le Cordon Bleu college of the culinary arts, so you would think maybe some of that would have rubbed off on me, but apparently not. He’ll have to teach me because he has made the best cake I have ever tasted (from scratch, of course) which included devil’s food, white cake, chocolate mocha filling, vanilla butter cream, almond macaroons, and chocolate shavings (you better be drooling!). I’m hoping one day he’ll make it again and I’ll share the recipe.