Mmmmm....My Home Made Birthday Cakes! (Rainbow)

The Rainbow Cake

To make this cake I used 2 x 8" sandwich tins which I used 3 times each to bake the different coloured layers.  Of course if you have more tins of the same size it would probably be easier and you would have to do less washing up but I was trying to save money! ;)

1) Make up a good sponge cake mix and times the quantities by two (you can find my favourite recipe if you go to my main page).  Divide the mixture between six bowls you can do this by eye or use the scales to try and weigh it out.
2) Using gel food colouring, add into each bowl of mixture a few blobs at a time until you get the required colours.  Although I made six layers I only used 5 colours they were: pink, yellow, green, blue and purple. To make the red colour I just used extra of the pink dye to the 'red' bowl and less in the pink bowl to create different shades.
3) Pour the mixtures into separate tins and bake for around 15-20mins each.  Once baked allow to cool.
4) Where each cake has risen in the oven trim each one so they are flat on the top and therefore easy to stack then eat the left over tops - yum!
5) Stack the cakes using butter-cream in between - try and put on an even layer of butter-cream as you will see this when the cake is cut open and you want a dramatic effect. Once all the cakes are layered, crumb coat the entire cake with more butter-cream (I always cheat and use Betty Crocker's butter-cream as I use a lot of it, it saves time and it tastes lovely!) Put the cake in the fridge to let the crumb coat harden for a maximum of half an hour.
6) Remove the cake from the fridge and using a spatula cover the entire cake with yet more butter-cream.  I have added coloured chocolate beans to finish. Here it is: