Let Them Eat Cake

The cake gets its own post. I know, I know, but it has to – it was the most labor intensive cake I’ve ever made. Much more work than the monkey cake that almost killed me (but definitely less stressful than that particular neurotic episode). This is another pinterest knockoff. Surprise! We’ve discussed before how I don’t have any of my own ideas, yes? Anyway, you’ve probably seen some of the cute and colorful rainbow cakes floating around that site, but you probably weren’t dumb enough to spend two days recreating the cake so your three year old would worship you for 10 seconds. I’m not going to lie, it was worth the 10 seconds of marveling.

Here’s the deal on this cake. You can do different colors and you can pick how many layers you want. I chose six and baked it in 8 inch round pans. If you’re a glutton for punishment, you could do different flavors. Yeah, I did not do different flavors. Color was enough for me. After researching a bit, I found that there’s a video over at Martha’s website for making the cake and the recipe, which is being credited to a blogger as the originator of the rainbow cake. I don’t know if you can say she was the first person to ever make a rainbow cake. Just like I kinda don’t believe Chick Fil A’s claim to inventing the chicken sandwich. I’m just objectionable like that. (BTW, I was the first person to invent blowing your nose.)

Technically this isn’t that hard. It’s a basic white cake with lemony swiss meringue frosting. Just count on major assemblage time, including the washing and re-greasing/cutting of parchment rounds if you have less than 6 cake rounds. Not to mention that dividing the batter evenly and coloring it all makes a major mess. I divided it into two days. Day one was baking and prepping the layers, day 2 – make frosting, crumb coat, and then decorate.

I used Wilton food coloring gels to color the batter. Like I said when I responded to comments about it earlier, it’s a white cake and it doesn’t take that much to get these saturated colors. It’s cake – it’s not good for you regardless. I had three pans so I baked in batches. I’ll admit, I wasn’t really tempted by the batter. It reminded me of play doh.

There’s not going to be that much batter in each pan, so make sure to spread it out evenly. The nice thing about the thin layers is that they all came out flat, and I didn’t have to level them. Once they were all baked and cooled, I wrapped them tightly in plastic wrap (careful not to break them) and put them in the freezer. Everything accounted for: 2.5 hours to make layers.

Freezing your cake layers makes frosting time much easier. Much, much, easier. Even if you can stick them in for 30 minutes it can help you out with the crumb and tearing situation.

Day 2: I busted out the layers and started the swiss meringue frosting. It’s the first time I’ve done swiss meringue buttercream and it worked out just fine. I was nervous but I followed the instructions I’ve heard are most important  – make sure that the meringue comes to room temp before adding the butter (about 10 mins), and after the butter is added just keep mixing – it will take a good five minutes to come together. The recipe called for frosting for the crumb coat and then additional for the final layer. Make frosting and crumb coat: 1 hour.

The recipe calls for 19 egg whites. 19! And 8 sticks of butter. That’s 4 cups. That’s a helluva a lot of butter. I had enough left over from the crumb coat that I didn’t need to make additional frosting – that spared us 2 sticks of butter and 5 egg whites. So, I guess my version is low fat. 

I started getting excited while layering the cake with the frosting. It looks much more enticing when the colors line up. BTW, I was true to ROYGBIV (except due to my dwindling red gel, I’ve got a pink – but the girls loved it).  I got out my camera and took exactly a kazillion pics.

I decided to embrace the idea of a plain white cake outside for greater surprise power. It took another half hour to frost it all smooth (i’m a perfectionist freak though). All up it took 4 working hours to make the cake. That does not include clean up time or the extra help I received from the midget.

It was a bit too plain jane for me, so I cut up some card stock and made a flag banner to string on it with some of the paper straws. Again, something not from my own mind. And Ta-DA! The cake was ready for it’s debut.

I really, reallly wish I had a picture of that first slice coming out – that’s the money shot. My hands were busy, you know, removing it, but everybody was ooh and ahhing as it came out. That was my 10 seconds of glory. The closest I will ever be to Cake God. I may have whispered to Dutch, “Who’s yo mama?!”

The cake is really about how it looks. Taste wise it was not my favorite. First of all, if you’ve been around me for 2 minutes, you know that I choose chocolate. Every time. The buttercream was creamy and tasted like it had a helluvalot of butter. The cake itself was a bit dry, but they seemed moist when I first took them out. I know there’s no way I could have taken them out sooner – they would have been mushy. Maybe the freezing, but I’ve never had problems with that in the past. Anyway, I’m extremely picky about my baked goods.

My official taste tester did not have any complaints.

And with that hint of lemon buttercream, it tasted like sunshine on a cloudy day.

oh yes, I went there.