To never, ever attempt this stupid cake again

[Mrsknackered]

It always looks brilliant when someone else has made it.
DS1 requested it for his party tomorrow, so far the green looks toxic, the blue is a weird grey, the orange has a nice thick brown crust around it and is twice the size of the other layers and half the purple looks barbecued.
I don't usually struggle with baking this much! I thought it was meant to be fairly easy.
Not sure if I can bring myself to attempt the pink, yellow and red at this rate

Go on, don't give up now! The other colours might come out amazing.

Did you use gels for the food colouring I did a rainbow cake for my little boys birthday and used the gels from hobby craft. The colours came out really well.

Rainbow cake layers look awful until you cut onto them. Then you really see the colours so don't worry

Rainbow cake? We recently invested in new food colouring from Lakeland. Fab colours - really vibrant.

Sure your ds won't care. It always looks impressive.

It sounds like an amazing (technicolour) cake - do you have a picture, OP?

Just call it Alien Cake. I bet the party goers will love it and it'll taste amazing - at least you've made your own, I say well done you!

Agree with PP I have made about six of these god damn things and the last three were lovely because I invested in some decent food colouring. The first few I used Tesco’s own and they looked alright once I put them together but the colours were dull.

Picture?

Photo please.

Agree with sleephead1 above, gel colouring is the way to go - I bake a lot and normal watery food colouring never gets the colour you want without LOADS which also affects the taste.

Add it to icing and make that the feature instead?

If all else fails, Asda sponge and re-ice

DS will love it no matter what you do I’m sure!

Also if you are really unhappy with it go left-field, you could mix the cake sponges with coloured buttercream and make him a cake pop masterpiece instead?

This is it so far! I think it'll be okay when it's cut into, I hope... but it's like the leaning tower.

I might just buttercream the outside and disguise with chocolate buttons or something?

It looks very moist and light - lovely texture. I'm sure there must be a way of stopping it leaning.

If you are using homemade buttercream you can use it to level the cake without cutting the cake up. Don't use shop bought buttercream as it's too soft. The colours look acceptable to me, not how I thought from your description. Also cover with buttercream and sweets as that hides mistakes. You can use tooth picks to hold it together.
All your ds will remember is the brilliant cake his mum made.

The brown outside will be covered with icing anyway and as others have said, the impressive bit is when it’s all iced together. I use a mix of half Trex (veg shortening) and half unsalted butter to make a nice white buttercream. (I add a bit of salt to make it taste nice though - I just find unsalted is less yellow)

They all look great apart from the blue, do you have enough blue left to redo that one with say 4x the colour?

I MAde it once - you need to use very good colourings. Wilton’s I think. It was a mega faff but looked amazing.

Oh dear! I'm sure it will taste lovely though. Having said that,it's better than anything I have ever attempted. I'm a disaster with cake making.

It's a Minecraft cake!

I would be inclined to slice the tops off them, not just so you can check that the colours really are okay, but also to make the stack more stable and less towering in height.

I think the colours will look great once you’ve iced it. I cover my cakes in smarties or you also ice the sides and then roll it in sugar strands. Pile loads of sweets/chocs/decorations on the top and EVERY kid will be at your side!

The blue is shit because it was the only one that they didn't have the gel version in!

Thanks for the buttercream recommendation. Need to go and get more butter.

If anyone is doing one of these in future, invest in some professional gel colours (sugarflair and americolor are great) and a cake leveller so you trim the crust off the top and bottom and make them flat.

Cakes don't need to be perfect, don't panic!

Did this for Dd ( rainbow cake) and was similarly worried, but as others have said colours were much better when "sliced into", also cut off the tops to stack. It honestly looked great when sliced

More zombie than rainbow... can you change 'theme' to that?

Zombie cake would be cool :)