In the beginning there was the Baker and the Baker said "Let there be cake". And there was cake. And when the Baker said that he/she was surely referring to the rainbow cake. Six multicoloured layers, each one held together with a meringue icing and then completely covered. A towering monument with a smashing reveal, the most secretive and party stopping cake I have ever made.
It was Gabe's birthday again. It appears to be rolling around with worrying frequency at this rate he'll be 20 and I'll be.... I'll be... GAH!
Gabe saw a picture of the cake and his enormous brown eyes grew by another magnitude, his voice grew breathy and he gripped my arm uncomfortably tightly with his precious little pink fingers.
"I want that for my birthday. Will you make that? Please? Please? Please"
He made that request 8 months before his actual birthday. I said yes because I knew that he, much like a capricious wind, could change at any moment. But no. He never wavered. And thus it was 8 months later I found myself baking at 7am on a Sunday morning. The day of the party.
Now folks, don't damn me, but I used a packet mix. My dear friend Stacey, who is a Sibylline like creature who advises me on all matters baking had already made this cake, or something akin to it and she had two words of advice. "Packet mix", she said with a steeliness that I won't forget soon.
So basically choose a good butter cake packet mix that isn't too coloured. I got two White Wings packets at 340grams each and used them.
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| Cheater! |
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I'm not going to tell you how to make a cake mix. There are perfectly good instructions on the rear of that box and they served me well. I will discuss colours though.
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| A pyramid of colour. And green, who is an outsider. |
Use gels colours. The crappy food dye that you get at the supermarket will not give you the depth of colour that you desire. I know that if you are making a rainbow cake you, like me, want colours that burst from the cake like entrails from an exploding cow. Nice and bright. These colours are "Americolor" made in the USA and they are just so strong and vivid. Highly recommended.
Warning: Do not get them on your hands if you like your hands the colour they normally are.
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| Green! |
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| Still green! |
These don't look to bright here, but they bake up very strong. You'll see. I have such cakes to show you.
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| Confusingly blue. |
If I had though my blogging through more I would have taken a picture of the green layer by itself. But I didn't, so I don't have a nice flow through there from mix, to tin to cake. Sorry. But feast your eyes on these...
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| Red and yellow and (no) pink and green, purple and orange and blue! |
The only real challenge with all this was finding the space to cool them and then keeping the colouring relay going. Also - try and make the mixes even. As it turned out they pretty much were and they also didn't rise too much so they were a similar size and shape.
The icing I made is a new thingie - this was the original recipe:
Meringue Icing
- 8 eggwhites
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4 cups caster sugar
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1 teaspoon vanilla extract
I halved that and had plenty. You could render a wall with it if you made the full amount.
Do this: Place eggwhites, vanilla, sugar and 1/4 cup cold water in a large
heatproof bowl. Whisk to combine. Place bowl over a saucepan of
simmering water. Using an electric hand mixer, beat eggwhite mixture for
15 minutes or until stiff peaks form.
It does work - if you can hold the bowl for 15 mins. My wrists almost snapped off - I don't have any fancy bowl on pot arrangement. It's the good old way for me. Which meant pain.
But it looked good.
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| The layers. |
And was very sticky. Which is a good thing when you are balancing all those layers on top of each other and literally crossing your fingers each time.
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| Mystery Cake! |
Gabe loved the fact that the icing was white and that he alone (ha!) knew that the cake would be rainbow. He was out of his mind with keeping it a secret by the time it came around cake cutting. Or high on sugar, or just overexcited because of the matching ninja costume he got with his cousin. It was a blur.
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| Actually they are the red power ranger. But don't tell them please. |
We cut the cake, and it was quite literally as thrilling as I hoped it would be. A rainbow. And the pure look of joy on Gabe's face was worth the blue hands.
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| A credit to me. |
Everyone thought I was awesome and I felt pretty much that way too.
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