I love to bake and while cookies and pies are delicious, reading Kaylah’s blog has been really inspiring me to try some more fun baking. I’ve been brainstorming ideas and recipes for cute food, miniatures and all kinds of things- and a pretty twist on a simple cake seemed like the perfect place to start!
The best thing about this cake is you don’t really need a recipe! Any white cake recipe will do – I used a vegan one – and even box mix works, you can easily make it vegan by adding 10 oz of club soda to the box mix instead of milk and eggs. For the icing you can use a vanilla buttercream, which is also easily made vegan friendly with a little googling.
The key ingredient is food colouring mixed into the cake batter, I found neon colours at my Safeway and instantly fell in love. They gave beautiful saturated colours in unexpected shades, and when you use traditional food colouring as well you can get some really amazing colours!
Your favourite white cake recipe or mix
Your favourite vanilla icing recipe
Six small mixing bowls
Neon (or normal) food colouring
1. Find your favorite white cake recipe and make a double batch of batter, according to its instructions.
2. Divide your batter into six small bowls (I recommend glass or metal so they don’t stain) and start doing a little figuring to make sure your rainbow cake is rainbow-like when you put it in the oven! I baked my cake in three layers, with two colours of batter per pan, and my figuring out the colours looked like this:
The colour names are written out so I remembered which order to pour them into the pans in :)
3. Pour your batter into the pans, and bake them off according to your recipe.
4. The colours will look slightly dull from the baking, but they’re wild inside, don’t worry! Allow the layers to cool completely and then start building your layer cake! Put one layer of icing in between the layers and stack as high as you can go! Don’t worry if it’s not perfect (part of mine broke!) because you can glue it together with the icing.
5. Complete the icing and get ready to surprise your friends when they cut into it- it’s a rainbow incognito!
I brought this to Knit Night at my favourite wool shop, Where The Wool Things Are, and it went over really well- it was a sugary, rainbow slice of wonderful, and it has me dreaming of more fun cakes in my future…
Yum! :)
{ 69 comments… read them below or add one }
OMG i LOVE (!) will definitely do this some time. awesome!
one problem though: does anyone have a recipe for frosting from scratch? you can’t buy the ready made stuff here in germany and i haven’t found a recipe that tastes good.
You haven’t found a tasty icing recipe yet? Yikes! Lets get that under control! :) Icing made from scratch is my favourite thing, it’s simple to make and you know what’s in it- the stuff that makes icing shelf stable makes me a little nervous lol
Here are a few options I would trust:
Swiss buttercream, maple cream cheese frosting, Chocolate Ganache, Simple Vegan Buttercream.
I think this calls for a cupcake making marathon, don’t you?
wow. thank you. the second one (from smitten kitchen) sounds great and really easy. will definitely try and bake. a lot. xoxo
bummer, i thought you were linking to VEGAN buttercreme recipes :(
Hey Lea,
The recipies that I linked to weren’t all vegan because Kim isn’t vegan & she was asking about pre-made frostings. However the last one is vegan & gluten free for good measure! :)
You can find it here:
http://www.godairyfree.org/Recipes/Dairy-Free-Desserts/Butter-Cream-Frosting-Vegan-Gluten-Free.html
I don’t source a lot of them because the buttercream recipes in the book “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World” (link) are as far as I ever look. There’s an incredible quantity of them, and they’re beyond delicious! If you’re still searching this is worth buying or taking out of the library if you’re short on cash :)
Love it! What a great idea and surprise. How fun.
Oh my god, you slay me. Diabetes, here I come. I’ll try a gluten free version. It will be called “Rainbow Brick Cake”
This is amazing Kyla, heart heart. xo
This is SO pretty! I have wanted to make a cake like this forever!
Woah! If I tried that it would be an absolute disaster… I would pay for that cake in a coffee shop!! :O
Oh my gosh, I want that cake!!!!!!
After my exams, I will try to bake this definitely!!!
<3
xo, Mel
http://mel-lifesalabyrinth.blogspot.com/
Oh my gosh, that is the cutest cake ever! That would be so fun for a child’s birthday party (or an adults, really!). :) Love it!
And I love the name of your knitting shop. I wish I lived close and could go to knitting night with you! I really do need to plan a trip to Winnepeg…
This sounds like so much fun! I’ve seen variations of this cake on other sites and it never fails to make my day when I see fun pictures of rainbow colored cupcakes or cakes. So glad that your knitting night friends enjoyed it, but really, with those colors? How could they not?
This looks AMAZING!!!!!!!! Wow… Might be the cutest, brightest cake I’ve ever seen.
i love this. so so much.
Can we discuss for a moment how jealous I was that you were eating this cake during our video chat on Friday? It looks amazing. I’m craving baked goods like it is my job! I’ll have to try this soon. Love the photos and the idea, so thanks for sharing.
Love it! If only vegan jello was easy to make, otherwise I’d send you the recipe for the best (seriously) jello creation ever. I don’t even *like* jello and I like this. (although people in Minnesota are weird and put things like cottage cheese and canned pineapple, which is the paragon of grossness).
And now I have a plan for what I’m making my kids for our next class party! Thanks, you!
I want the cake!
I made this cake a couple years ago when Hubby (then Boyfriend) was having a bad day, to cheer him up. It made such an enormous mess. But it was so fun to make (and eat!) and it succeeded in putting a smile on his face! Thanks for the refresher, it would be nice to make it again.
Ok, to be honest… this cake freaks me out *LOL*
It looks really pretty, but something inside me tells me that it’s wrong to eat something with such bright, unnatural colors ;) Do you taste the food color at all?
It’s supposed to be a little crazy! It it was every day and not a little freaky it wouldn’t be fun! ;)
The nice thing about the neon colours is that you don’t have to use a ton to get bright colours- this uses a lot less than I’ve had to use in making red velvet cake look red. And there’s definitely no taste other than the vanilla icing and cake.
Haha, you’re right, Kyla. It’s supposed to be a little crazy… ;) I am glad to hear though that it tastes pretty much the same.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-dorable.
Love it!
This is sooo great!
Omg Kyla that cake is SO FUN! I love it!
And what a neat trick about using club soda instead of milk and eggs. I did NOT know that! Does that work with any baking recipe that calls for milk and eggs? Like cookies?
I know that it a great way to cut the fat down and make simple cakes vegan, and it would definitely work cupcakes, but I think that it helps stand in for the milk more than it does for the eggs.
To make a cookie recipe vegan you would be looking to swap out the butter and eggs. Vegan margarine can be a good stand in for the butter, and to substitute for the eggs in a cookie recipe I would recommend using either applesauce or ground flax and water- but I tend to have more luck with straight vegan recipes than I do with lots of substitutions. Once you figure out kind of vegan recipes give you the results you would like it’s easier to work backwards :)
This is my go to for substitutions :)
Too cute.. I’m definitely going to have to try this one out! That’s the perfect baking project to brighten up a gloomy, rainy day.
Oh my goodness, this looks amaaaaaazing! It’s the cake Rainbow Brite would have! Haha. Seriously, it looks so awesome. I’ll definitely have to try this sometime, if I can find neon food colors here (something is telling me I won’t because Germans aren’t that crazy on food coloring, usually all you get is plain red, green, blue and yellow). And I’ll make sure not to tell the people who are going to eat it, I want to see the looks on their faces when they see it’s rainbow on the inside!
I have a hard time making white cake from the box. I’m challenged when it comes to baking … but your cake looks super cute ~ and delicious :D
I love these rainbow cakes and keep forgetting that I want to try it out! I really want to make some in CUPCAKE form!!!
So. Cute. :D
That looks amazing and delicious! I think this rainbow cake business is moving closer to the top of my “baking experiments” list.
I love rainbow cakes! They are so cute!
HOLY MOLY THAT LOOKS DELICIOUS!!!!! my cousin actually just sent me a care package in the mail today and it was a cookbook from Taste of Home all about cake mixes and doctoring them up! Looks amazing and can’t wait to try them!!! ;-)
Cool, neon food coloring! That’s awesome and I sort of want to make everything neon…
That’s amazing!!
YAY! Thank you, I have been wondering about this since you tweeted pictures of it. :)
This time of year is absolutely my favorite. I got married last October and I am all about spending this month celebrating life. This month I plant to continue working on products for my new Etsy launch, which I am hoping to get up in time for the holidays. Also, I am recommitting myself to my health. Incorporating exercise into my daily life.
Good for you for embracing your anxiety and working on it! It’s something I struggle with as well, but I love talking to people who aren’t afraid to talk about it.
This is AMAZING!! Want to try it out ASAP. Yummy.
You are just so creative. *Loves it*
That’s like the happiest looking cake I’ve ever seen. Thanks for the recipe!
I made rainbow cupcakes last month using Kayla’s suggestions, though we made our own white cake & cream cheese icing. They were beauuuutiful. The cake looks even better!
very pretty (and yummy, too, i’m sure) — i’ve gotta try this!
That came out gorgeous!
I love it! I made one for my boyfriend like this (in red, green and yellow) for his birthday in July, and lately I’ve been making lots of colourful cupcakes to “pay” his sisters and cousin for modelling for Holly Knitlightly and taking photos! hehe. They love them! And they are so fun to make. :)
This is too fun. I love cake, and I absolutely love the neon colors. I fear I might start dying everything ;)
I need to always have some variation of this cake in my kitchen. I feel like it’s impossible to be depressed when you have an edible rainbow at your disposal.
That is SO adorable! I’ve seen a bunch of variations on rainbow cake over the last couple of years, but I have yet to try anything like that myself. I’m seriously considering trying it TONIGHT, to serve up at the pre-Halloween potluck Joe and I are hosting tomorrow! Maybe I’ll make it in fall-ish colors, somehow (orange, yellow, brown)… The wheels are turning in my head. Thanks for the inspiration, as always. :-)
This is awesome!! I am totally trying this this weekend. Rainbow cakes light up every one’s day.
Your cake turned out amazing Kyla! I would love to make one of these for my boyfriend and I :]
I am mesmerized by the colors and I didn’t even know they made food coloring in neon.
not only does this looks delicious but the colors make it so fun! I
Wow that looks amazing!!!
this is the most awesome cake ever! thanks!!
It looks beautiful!
THAT looks AMAZING. If I end this gluten free experiment, I will definitely make this with and for my little niece!
I love this idea!
Um, this looks SO FREAKING DELICIOUS. And so pretty! Will definitely be adding the recipe to my “to-bake” list.
So neat! I’ve seen these before but never a vegan one. Yay vegan baking!
This looks amazing. I’ve seen it done with cupcakes and it’s just so cute!
That’s the prettiest cake I’ve seen in a long time! :)
I am SO making this cake soon!!! -and it’s gonna break my no sugary things decision i made earlier today (damnit)…. but the picture of all the colourful layers and simple icing makes me soooooooo hungry~ LOVE it.
This is so great! I love that you made it vegan too, i’ve never seen a vegan one.
lovely! :)
How many boxes of cake mix do you need???
This looks so cool! I’m going to bake something similar for the bday of a friend next week. Would you mind letting me know what white cake recipe you have used? I’m yet to find a good white vegan cake recipe on the net :( Thank you so much!
For sure! I actually used a box cake and made it vegan by using soda instead of all the dairy and oil they call for- you can see the recipe here. I liked this approach a lot because it lets you focus on perfecting the colour and having mad scientist style fun, which was what I was excited about when I made this :)
After some quick googling around, this looks like a great bet if you want to make the cake at home :)
OMGGGGG
IM GOING TO TRY THIS OUT FOR MY BIRTHDAY
today I bought the ingrediance please don’t remove this from your blog
My baking day will be the 27th
I so nervous bit I hope it turns out
My only problem is I bought a
8in 9in and 10in cake pans
Not smallers ones for the layers
Does that affect anything??????
I seriously need your help
I would love for my birthday cake to turn out awesome
Ha! Yoki, you’re hilarious- I won’t remove this from my blog. If you use larger or smaller cake pans it could effect the baking time, but just keep an eye on them. Thin layers will cook quickly as well, so just watch them closely and you’ll be set :)
I’m gonna to this for sure. It’s amazing! You’re very creative! :))
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