Rainbow Cake

Rainbow Cake

This cake is similar to my Rainbow Layer Cake. Full instructions for making the Rainbow Layer Cake can be found here.

A slice of Rainbow Layer Cake

I made this cake for Linda’s birthday.  Her husband secretly ordered it from me and I thought that such a romantic gesture wouldn’t be complete without some love hearts!

It really is as simple to make as the photos look – you dye the cake batter, pour into the pans and bake!

It is based on a white mud cake, filled with white chocolate ganache and covered in sugar paste

This cake was so much fun to make and eat!  I love the surprised look on peoples faces when you pull out the first slice ~ Rainbow cake is something that makes everyone smile 🙂

If you need more information on how to make ganache and cover your cake with it just click here.

Two things make this cake special

1. The Rainbow Inside. A really big surprise if the recipient and/or guests have no idea what is inside.

2. The cake is based on a White Chocolate Mud Cake. Lots of people are scarred to use colours with Chocolate mud cakes if they do not have the special chocolate colours. I did a lot of research before I used my ordinary food colours and the reason they work is because we are not colouring 100% pure chocolate. The other ingredients magically make it alright to use Wilton or AmeriColor (these are the only two makes that I have tried so far).

7″ White Chocolate Mud Cake (Planet Cake recipe)

I used 2 x 7″ pans
180g butter
180g white chocolate
160ml water
195g SR flour
180g plain flour
240g caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence


Ganache

780g white chocolate, finely chopped
270g pure cream
Sugarpaste

730g yellow sugar paste

small amounts of orange, red, purple, blue and green sugar paste
White Chocolate Mud Cake Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Grease and line bases of both cake pans with baking paper.
3. Combine chopped butter and water in a saucepan.
4. Stir over low heat until butter is melted. Turn off heat, then add the chocolate and stir until it has melted and is well combined.
5. Sift flours into a bowl. Add sugar, a pinch of salt and make a well in the centre.
6. Pour chocolate mixture, egg and vanilla into the well then stir with a wooden spoon until well combined.
7. Divide the batter equally amongst the 6 bowls. Weigh your mixing bowl before you begin adding ingredients and then subtract the weight of the bowl from the final measurement after the batter is completed. Divide that number by six and add that weight of batter to each bowl, and then whisk a fair amount of the appropriate food colour into each bowl. Keep in mind that the color of the unbaked batter will be the color of the baked batter.
8. I poured 5/6th of the red batter into the pan that would be the top tier. I spread it out a little to touch the sides of the pan and be a little thinner in the middle.
9. I then poured 4/6th of the orange batter in the middle of the pan on top of the red. I moved it about a little to make a good circle.
10. I then poured 3/6th (i.e. 1/2) of the yellow batter on top followed by the green, blue then purple.
11. In the second pan that would be the bottom tier, I first of all poured 5/6th of the purple batter followed by the blue, green, yellow, orange and finally red.
12. Bake for 30 -35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when poked into the middle of the cakes.
13. Leave in tins to cool completely on a wire rack.
14. When cool, cut the domes off both cake and sandwich together with white ganache making sure that the bottom tier is placed upside down to create the design in my picture at the top of this post.

White Ganache

1. Place chocolate pieces in a large bowl.
2. Put the cream in a saucepan and bring to boiling point. Pour the cream over the chopped chocolate and mix with a hand whisk until the ganache is smooth.
3. Allow to cool completely and then leave to set overnight, if possible.

Colours of the rainbow

Coloured cake batter

Ready for the oven

Cooling on a wire rack

Rainbow Cake

Rainbow Cake

Rainbow Cake

Rainbow Cake

Rainbow Cake

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Hand painted Wedding Cake Tutorial

Materials needed

7″ and 9″ round card for the base of each tier.

Doweling for support

Bottle Green satin ribbon – 6mm wide by 2m

Bottle Green satin ribbon – 2 inches wide by 2m

Black satin ribbon 1 inch wide by 2m

Diamontes buckle

13″ diameter cake board 4mm or 6mm thick

7” Dark Chocolate Mud Cake round

135g butter

135g dk choc

15g coffee

100ml water

75g SR

75g plain

30g cocoa

.3 tsp bicarb

295g caster

2.5 eggs

4.5 tsp oil

60ml buttermilk

Ganache

735g dark chocolate

365ml pure cream

Fondant

740g sugar-paste

9” Dark Chocolate Mud Cake round

220g butter

220g dk choc

25g coffee

160ml water

125g SR

125g plain

50g cocoa

.5 tsp bicarb

480g caster

4 eggs

7 tsp oil

100ml buttermilk

Ganache

1200g dark chocolate

600ml pure cream

Fondant

1.2kg sugar-paste

Click here to learn how to make dark chocolate mud cake and dark chocolate ganache.
Click here to learn how to torte and cover your cake with ganache.
Click here to learn how to cover your cake with sugar paste.

The pattern on the top tier of the cake was inspired by Crewel Embroidery and I looked at many examples on the net for inspiration.

 

Sample of Crewel Embroidered fabric

I wanted to use simplified elements of the original designs to create a new and unique black and white design.  

First of all I made a template for the top of the cake and the sides from some greaseproof paper…

….and then drew on my design with an HB pencil. 

 

I turned the paper around and traced the design on the back, again using an HB pencil (do not use a softer pencil as it will smudge onto your pure white icing and really make a mess). Pencils are made from graphite not lead and are non toxic.

I transfered my design onto the cake using a sharp HB pencil, securing the template with sticky tape around the sides and holding the top down lightly with my fingertips.

 I scanned my greaseproof paper templates for you to enlarge in your photocopier to fit the exact size of your cake. Once you have the outline transferred to the cake you can paint the motifs larger going over the lines a little covering up all the pencil marks as I have allowed for this by drawing the outlines smaller than i require for the finished work.

 

The bottom of each stem is covered by the green ribbon and the top of each stem I ended in an RI dot or two. Choose one of the central stems and line it up with the stem on the top of the cake.

I used Cake Art black edible colour on top but it was a little shiny so used Wilton on the sides and was happier with the finish. I used two round Taklon brushes a No 5/0 to outline and a No 4 to fill in.

If your colour is too thick, use a little Vodka to thin it down. I didn’t need to use any on this occasion.

 

Sorry that the video is so boring and has TV noise in the background but it is my first YouTube clip and I hope to improve. It also shows how slow I am at painting on cake. it took me 4 hours to complete! My brush was rubbish with hairs sticking out at right angles which I cut off making the brush almost impossible to use as there were only about 12 hairs left LOL! I have since replaced it.

Another tip! Use a brush with very long hairs as this helps with lines. Lay most of the brush on the cake and pull it along as this reduces hand wobble.

To make my design zing I wanted to add piped Royal Icing dots but decided to wait until the cake was fully assembled.

 

To assemble the cake I firstly placed the bottom tier on its base using some Royal Icing as glue. I then covered the bare edges of the board using a roll of sugar-paste which I unrolled like you would a carpet around the cake. Join at the back by first overlapping the sugar-paste and cutting with a knife through both layers, removing the excess and joining with a little Royal Icing.

Ali (my partner) marks the length of dowel to be cut while I take the picture.

I needed 4 dowels to support the top tier for this cake and one double height piece for the central dowel (this stops the top tier from sliding about while being transported).

Ali pushes in the first dowel

Ali carefully taps in the central dowel.

The central dowel cuts right through the middle of my design but it is easy to cover this up with a small black sugar-paste cut out, topped with a smaller white round piece of sugar-paste and crowned with a large dot of black royal icing.

Can you see the added dots!

I stuck the black ribbon onto the middle of the green ribbon using 12mm wide double sided tape but left the ends of the bow unstuck so that they could be hanging loosely from the bow as they would look too rigid otherwise.

I didn’t cut the ribbon in any way to form the bow. I just made it look good while holding it in my hand then slipped it through the diamonte buckle trying not to lose any of the nice shape I had.