A Trusted Rainbow Cake Recipe!

Its my normal 8” round vanilla sponge cake recipe, which is –
12 ounces of SR flour
3 ounces of Plain flour
12 ounces sugar
12 ounces butter (marge etc.)
12 ounces of eggs – weighed without their shells (I find weighing the eggs out of their shells gives a much nicer cake that rises much better)
Drop of vanilla essence (amount depends on brand)
Red, orange , yellow, green, blue & purple colourings (I used sugarflair)

Make sure egg & butter are at room temperature, and cream together until very light & fluffy, add egg & vanilla slowly beating well after each addition, then slowly stir in flours.

I had my oven set on 170c (which is gas mark 3, or 325 f)

Divide the mixture evenly between 6 bowls & add colouring a little at a time until the desired colour is achieves, it does darken during cooking so you don’t need to colour it quite as dark as you would like it to end up.

Grease & flour an 8” cake tin, line the bottom with a circle of greaseproof paper, it’s a good idea to cut out 6 circles of greaseproof all at once to save time. Spread your first colour (purple) over the bottom of the pan, it will be very thin, so you need to try & spread it evenly over the greaseproof. The bake, I haven’t a clue how long it took, but not as long as cupcakes, keep checking and you want it ‘just cooked’ as it will go crispy really fast.

I turned mine out directly onto a cake card, and left to cool while I repeated the process with the next colour , it is really thin so cooled quickly, peel off the greaseproof spread a little ganache on another cake card (same size as cake) invert this onto the cake so it sticks on top and invert the whole lot so you now have your purple layer stuck flat side down to your 8” cake card. (don’t forget to keep an eye on the cake in the oven), once the next cake is done, tip out onto your cake card again & cook your 3rd layer. Now 1st layer should be cool, you can spread it with buttercream & add your second layer, and so on until you have all 6 layers. I refrigerated for a little while to firm up the buttercream so the layers didn’t all move when I came to coat it, then once firm, coated in white chocolate ganache to hold it all together nicely & ready for icing.