As I mentioned in my last post (here), for my daughter’s first birthday I had a little rainbow theme going and one of the things I really wanted to make was a rainbow layered cake. I had a recipe for an easy cake mix and from the same Pin I had a link to a ‘super-easy’ cream cheese frosting so those, along with lots of Pins for rainbow decorations, were my starting point. 
The cake and frosting mixes were indeed easy to make and both were a delicious vanilla flavour due to using vanilla bean paste rather than essence. I used gel food colouring to colour the batches of cake as it gives a much more vibrant colour to the baked sponge. 
My first batch of cake mix didn’t end up being the cake as I discovered a bit too late that I didn’t have the right sized cake tins, so I ended up with a load of cupcakes instead. 
I started again the next day (with the right sized tins) and baked my six sponges. I wrapped and chilled them ready for the next day assembling the cake and getting the frosting on. In hindsight I should have trimmed the cakes to the same sizes and levelled the tops, but I’m a novice attempting this cake for the first time, so my end result looks more rustic. 
Icing the cake was very tricky as my sponge layers would slide around and as soon as the frosting got a bit warm it would melt off the sides, so I had to keep stopping to chill it all. I’ve never iced a cake with cream cheese frosting before so doing the ‘crumb coat’ and building it all up was quite fiddly. Icing the cupcakes, however, was a doddle! 
I chose a simple decoration for on top of the cake as I already had a big cake topper ordered, and by this point I couldn’t face trying to model anything from sugar paste. I fashioned a ‘1’ from tin foil and placed it on top of the cake and then sprinkled multicoloured sugar strands over the top before removing the stencil. Et voilà! 
I have to be honest here, I love how the cake turned out. I love the decoration. I love the layers of the rainbow when the cake is slice or the cupcakes bitten in to. It turned out exactly as I hoped but… it’ll be a long, long time before I attempt another rainbow cake! 
Cake recipe here: https://pin.it/C72Wgmr
Frosting recipe here: https://pin.it/m6RMcMS
Decoration link here: https://pin.it/xG84Zez
victorialjames 