Are rainbow cakes hard to make?

[Dancergirl]

I've never made one before but would like to try for dd's birthday.

I presume I can buy everything I need from Lakeland?

Also, can you make a chocolate rainbow cake?

Thanks maple think I'll stick to regular cake rather than chocolate. Do you think I could use chocolate icing/frosting though to sandwich together?

Chocolate icing will be fine but people usually use white because the colours look better.. but the cake will still be rainbowed of course! They're not hard to make but they are a lot of faff! Good luck, send me a piece when done

Make a standard Victoria sponge mix - weigh the mixture and split evenly in bowls and add a colour to each bowl. Stack, fill and enjoy

I got Wilton colours online - gel and works really well (I used Amazon, but other retailers available). From Tesco I got a packet of disposable round foil tart tins (not sure what to call them) so that I could make each one and then bake in turns - this worked really well as you only do thin layers anyway.

It is more time consuming then you think.

I have the layer pans from Lakeland and the Wilton colours too. I made rainbow cake and a blue ombré cake this weekend. Cakes cooked in 10 mins. Jam to stick together and the butter icing on outside. Took an hour or so total. Cooled quickly as thin cake.

What size pans do you have katz? I want the bigger 8" ones so the cake's not so tall.

theonly don't the cakes stick in foil, or do you line them with parchment?

I think 8 inch ones but I've just packed all my kitchen up as it's being refitted.

Layer pans from Lakeland
Wilton colours from Amazon
Foolproof recipe on Kerry Cooks blog

Right, I have the Wilton colours from Amazon and foil tins from Tesco and recipe posted above. I'm not sure I'm going to bother with freezing them though.....hope it will be ok!

I just greased them and then dusted with flour and it was fine. I don't normally freeze cake, but have done when I didn't think I'd have time for baking and decorating.

I've frozen and not frozen them and both been fine. Just the frozen ones are slightly easier to ice. But that recipe is excellent especially the cream cheese icing which is delish. They'll be great whatever way you do it.

They are pretty easy to make, just time consuming - I make 2 layers at a time.

I have only ever used this brand food colouring.

I have made it 3 times. The last one I made also included a pinata - so when it was cut a load of skittles rolled out of the middle.

Right, cakes are made and in fridge. I'm assembling it today. Another question - I don't want to do cream cheese frosting and all other recipes say to use buttercream. Can I just use plain icing sugar mixed with water? Or isn't it thick enough? If I use buttercream how do I get a good white colour?

Icing with water will one out as a drizzle rather than a creamy frosting. If you beat the buttercream for a long time, it tends to turn almost white. It will contrast well with the colours. I have made the Kerry recipe with both buttercream and cream cheese frosting, the cream cheese does taste much better! The lemon cuts through the sweetness and makes it much much better.

Thanks, I don't think dd will like the cream cheese, I'll do buttercream. Can you buy white food colouring?

Buttercream always has a slight yellow hue IME and there isn't much I've found you can do about it. If I want proper white icing I do Marshmallow frosting. Its a bit of a faff but beautifully white.
I use this recipe:
allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/25045/easy-marshmallow-fondant-icing.aspx
Or this one:
allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/22337/soft-marshmallow-icing.aspx

The second one is harder and takes longer IMO. Best of luck

You can get a white food colouring powder to add to your using sugar, which will make butttercream white. Not flat white, but much whiter than regular buttercream. Also buttercream that is just butter, sugar, vanilla will have a yellower tint than if you beat a spoonful of milk in at the end. The milk will also make the white foodcolour stronger.

Thanks

Update - I managed to find a white gel colour which I mixed into the buttercream. Cake is assembled and I have butter creamed and decorated the top But the sides are still bare and I can't decide whether to butter cream them or not. All the pictures I've seen have the cake completely covered in icing.... The trouble is, I don't know how easy the side will be to do. Some of the cakes aren't quite flat so there are some gaps at the side. What do you think MN bakers??

I used three large ikea baking large trays and blobbed the mixture on both sides, no need for fancy trays.

I used some food colouring I already had from Tesco. I just mixed up the colours myself.

Very easy cake to make. Just a Madeira mix, take a sixth out, pop it in a bowl, mix with the mixed colour and blob on the left side to the tray, repeat and blob on the right side and do this for three large trays.
When cooked you might have to discard eat the uneven border in the centre of the tray, but that's fine, it's not much of you take a little care not to have them uneven when pouring the mix down.

I mixed sugar with butter and a drop of lemon juice for the icing and used that within and outside the cake. Took me about an hour all in all from start to finish.

No need for any equipment or new fancy colours. I got my colours in Tesco and mixed them myself. (Yellow with red =orange etc) Trays were from ikea.

Dancer, cut down the sides until they are flat, turn on its side on parchment paper and ice the top side, turn over and ice the other side.

Put it in the fridge for an hour.

When you say they aren't quite flat, do you mean that the cakes rose when baking to make them slightly domed? Or do you mean that the outside edges are uneven?

If the former, then it's too late to do anything about it once the cake has been constructed - you would have needed to trim the dome off before buttercreaming. If the latter, then you can sculpt the cake with a sharp knife before buttercreaming the sides.

Either way, you can still buttercream the sides without changing anything. Fill the gaps with more buttercream (a piping bag or syringe is helpful). Smooth with a knife - don't worry about the rest of the cake right now, just use the buttercream to even out the surface. Place in the fridge to firm up the buttercream.

Then you'll have a nice, even surface to cover smoothly and easily with more buttercream.

Yes they are slightly domed goody

Thanks for all your helpful advice, going to mix up more buttercream this morning and do the sides. Party is this afternoon, eeekkkk! I presume keep the buttercream very soft for easy application?