I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to post my rainbow cake recipe. Thank you to everyone that has reminded me! I used a basic Victoria sponge recipe for the basis of the cake and for this I followed
this recipe here by Mary Berry who I think is fabulous! I just adapted it slightly to create a third layer and to get the rainbow effect.
If you want to make a classic two layer cake you will need:
225g / 8oz caster sugar.
225g / 8oz self-raising flour.
225g / 8oz butter or margerine. This recipe works well with either in my opinion!
2 tsp baking powder.
4 free range eggs.
Gel Food Colouring.
Strawberry or Raspberry Jam.
Icing (optional!)
If it’s a cake for a special occasion and you want to make a third layer you will need:
338g / 12oz caster sugar
338g / 12oz self-raising flour.
338g / 12oz butter or margerine.
3 tsp baking powder.
6 free range eggs.
Gel Food Colouring.
Strawberry or Raspberry Jam.
Icing (optional)
Step One. Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F / Gas Mark 4.
Step Two. Grease and line two or three (depending on your choice of cake) 8 or 9 inch sandwich tins. Use baking paper to line the bottom of the tins and butter or margerine to grease the sides.
Step Three. Break the eggs into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar, flour, baking powder and butter.
Step Four. Mix everything together until it’s all combined. You can use a wooden spoon for this, it’ll just take a bit longer so it’s easier to use an electric hand whisk. The mixture should be a soft dropping consistency.
Step Five. Divide the mixture equally between six bowls and add a small amount of each of your food colouring colours into each bowl. Mix it thoroughly together until each colour is as bright as you’d like it to be. I used red, yellow, green, orange, blue and purple food colouring.
Step Six. Now it’s time to pop the mixture into the sandwich tins for baking. Each tin will have every colour mixture in it. You will need to use more mixture for the first colour in the tin to ensure that everything doesn’t mix together too quickly.
For example for the tin in the top picture (just above) I used:
One tablespoon of purple
Two tablespoons of blue
Three tablespoons of green
Four tablespoons of yellow
Five tablespoons of orange
Six tablespoons of red
For the tin in the second picture I used:
One tablespoon of yellow
Two tablespoons of orange
Three tablespoons of red
Four tablespoons of green
Five tablespoons of blue
Six tablespoons of purple.
I hope that’s clear enough, I’ve found describing what I did super difficult – I should have filmed myself baking it because that would have been easier!
Step Seven. Bake your layers on the middle shelf of the oven (you may need to to this in stages especially if you’re doing three layers) for around 25 minutes. I tend to check on them after 20 minutes. They should be springy to the touch.
Step Eight. Let the cakes cool for a while before running a knife gently round the edges and turning the cakes out on to a cooling rack. You will have something that looks like these.
Step Nine. When all your layers have cooled completely you can begin to assemble them. You can use whatever you want between the layers, I opted for a small amount of icing and some strawberry jam. You can use whipped cream instead of icing, or anything you’d like.
Step Ten. You can then leave it like that with the rainbow colours on show. I was baking this cake as a birthday cake and wanted it to be a surprise so I decided to completely ice the outside. Now I cheated and my icing came from a pot thanks to Betty Crocker but you can of course make your own with butter and icing sugar. I opted to colour the white icing blue because my boyfriend likes blue but you obviously don’t have to or you could opt for another colour. The easiest way I found to ice the cake was to put little splodges all over and then smooth it over with a blunt knife.
And there you go, one finished cake! This isn’t a cake I’d recommend baking all the time or eating a lot of purely because of all that food colouring. But it’s fun and definitely makes a birthday cake that will leave people talking!
When you cut it open you can see it in all its colourful glory and I was super proud of how mine turned out especially because this was the first time I’d ever attempted to make a rainbow cake!
Have you ever made a rainbow cake before? Do you think you'll give this a go one day?
xoxo
P.S. I got my gel food colouring from ebay for about £12 for 6 colours. I find gel colouring to be more intense than liquid!