Rainbow Cake how-to

January 18th, 2010 by justJENN

This is the happiest little cake Darth Vader has ever seen. Why I combined rainbows and Darth Vader for the Kid’s birthday, I don’t know – doing a dark chocolate would be too easy, right?? But the Kid LOVES Star Wars and hey – he’s 6, so let’s celebrate! A perfect cake for the dark lord in all of us. This was fun and tasty and I love that the candle is a lightsaber, hilarious!

ingredients:
white cake batter
(this Very Vanilla Cake works well – if you decide to use box mix, UGH, just don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.)
5 different colors of gel food coloring

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prep two round cake pans by lining the bottom with parchment and buttering right on top of it, doing the sides of the pan as well.

I used the Very Vanilla cake recipe and divided the batter into 5 small bowls. You should get about 1 cup in each bowl. I dyed each of the bowls of batter a different color. Gel dye is the best because you need very little of it.

What you are going to do is make two round rainbow cakes, so the batter will be divided equally into two pans – follow? Probably not, that’s why I tried to take pictures. Let’s just hope for the best.

Now pour HALF of one bowl of batter – let’s say blue to start – right in the center of the first pan. The rest will go into the center of the second pan.Then take the second bowl, green, and pour half of that RIGHT into the center of the blue. Go on, don’t worry. The batter will spread all on it’s own. IT’S LIKE MAGIC. Or not. Then take the orange, pour half THAT right into the center of the previous color, and so on and so on.

Eventually you will have TWO pans of cake batter ready to roll that look like this:

Bake for 18-20 minutes depending on your oven, until your cake comes out nice passes the toothpick test perfectly. Let cool in pans, then invert onto a wire rack to cool completely.

They look like targets, but when you slice into it, trust me, it will all come together. I stacked the two cakes (with frosting in between, of course) and I just frosted this with a tinted blue vanilla buttercream.

Just for kicks and cause the Kid loves them, I and added a few Godiva White Chocolate Balls around the edges. If you want to see how SUPER EASY it is to stencil lettering onto a cake (for all of you scared of fondant) go HERE.

Darth Vader LOVES rainbows. I’m sure your kids will love this cake too.

*How I frosted the lettering in the Star Wars font (it was easy): Stencil Lettering how-to, here.