Inspired by Chocolatesuze: Rainbow Vanilla Buttercake

Looks like a normal cake right?

Until you cut a slice out of it to reveal crazy rainbow colours!

I had planned on baking something amazing for my dear friend Queen Chu's 21st birthday, but it wasn't until I saw this cake that I thought a) I have to make this! and b) I'm crazy! At this point in time chocolatesuze had yet to post up her method of making her amazing rainbow cake so I was sort of improvising along the way and just praying that everything would turn out alright.

I was never as ambitious as chocolatesuze to make an astounding 20 layers in her cake AND make it into a fork shape, so I ended up with 8 layers. I didn't have high hopes for success while I was baking this, hence the lack of process photos but it turned out surprisingly well (albeit a bit lopsided!). Chocolatesuze's recipe is here for a 20 layer cake and probably one that is more efficient to make but I'll post mine below anyway just in case you're interested ;)

Rainbow Vanilla Buttercake

Basic Vanilla Buttercake
90g butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 cup self-raising flour
2 eggs
3 tbsp milk


Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, vanilla and milk and beat together. Sift flour into mixing bowl and mix until well combined. 

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Make 3 portions of your favourite buttercake recipe or use the one above. Take about 3/4 cup of the batter and put into separate bowls until you have used up all the batter. You should end up with about 8 or 9 bowls.

2. Make your colours! Chocolatesuze recommends using food colouring gels but I only had liquids on me and I used these and they turned out ok. Make each bowl have a different colour and you can afford to use quite a lot if you want your colours bright.

3. Spread one colour of your cake batter thinly onto the base of a cake tin. I used a 20cm round springform tin but in hindsight it would probably have been better to use a smaller, non-springform tin because sometimes the edges came off when I removed the ring. Try to spread it as evenly as possible across the base. Don't worry about it being too thin - the cake will rise.

4. Pop it into the oven for about 10-15 mins depending on your oven. I didn't time this exactly but after doing this 8 times it turned out to be about 11 minutes for me. You can check by using a cake tester in the middle of the cake - the skewer should come out clean. The edges should just be starting to brown.

5. Leave to cool for about 10 minutes (here it would be helpful if you have several tins of the same size because you can start baking the next layer instead of waiting for the cake to cool so you can use the tin). Turn your cake out onto a plate or something and begin the process again from step 3 using another colour.

Chocolate Ganache
300g dark chocolate
300mL cream

Heat cream in a saucepan and just before it boils take the cream off the heat and pour it over your chocolate. Stir to melt the chocolate. Leave to cool (you can put it in the fridge) until it is of icing consistency.

6. Decide which order you want your coloured layers to go. At this point if your layers do not have nice edges you may want to trim them so they are reasonably flat. Make sure you trim all the layers to the same size. Place the bottom colour down and slather with the cooled chocolate ganache to stick the next layer on top of it. Repeat for all layers and continue to ice the top and sides of the cake until the whole cake is covered in chocolatey goodness :)