Rainbow Cake and a Pot of Gold

Anna and I had so much fun decorating this rainbow cake together. Not only is it a rainbow on the outside, but it's also a rainbow on the inside. It was so much fun to cut into and expose all those colorful layers. And the best part of all - it looks impressive, but it's EASY to make.



You start with two boxes of white cake mix. Prepare them according to package directions, and divide the batter equally into 6 bowls. Using gel food colors, color each of the 6 portions a color of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet).



Since I have one oven and 3 pans, I did just 3 colors at a time. Use parchment paper in the bottoms of your pans, and the baked cakes will drop out easily and without any tearing. Also, if you bake them at 325 degrees instead of 350, they will rise a little more evenly. Just increase your cooking time a little bit - the cakes are done when the edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan. It also helps to freeze the layers before stacking them - they're much easier to work with. Just stack them with plastic wrap or wax paper between the layers.



Start with purple and, if necessary, trim the cake with a long serrated knife to make it level. Ice the top with a thin layer of buttercream frosting (recipe at the bottom of this post). Repeat with the next layer . . . and the next . . . and the next . . . until all 6 layers are stacked. Finish it by icing the top and sides with buttercream frosting. I used 10 inch round cake pans, and to ice between each layer and finish the outside of the cake, it took a quadruple recipe of buttercream frosting.  That's a lot of frosting!!!



We had this cake for a party that was the day before St. Patrick's Day, so what better way to decorate it than with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. To make the decorating easier, I drew in the larger parts of the design with the point of a small sharp knife. Then Anna and I filled in the design with colored icing (more buttercream colored with gel food coloring).



My FAVORITE decorating tool is these squeeze bottles. I use them for sugar cookies, cakes, etc. They're so much easier to use than an icing bag. If you can draw a simple, child-like drawing of a cloud and rainbow, then you can decorate with these squeeze bottles.  They're sitting in cups of warm water to keep the frosting liquidy enough to squeeze out of the bottles easily. By about the 5th time a cup of water got knocked over, I decided that probably wasn't the best method for keeping the frosting warm.



We used a leprachaun candy climber and turned it into a tree by adding branches and leaves. Anna made a lake surrounded by cattails with ducks swimming (and even diving) in it. She also did the plaid pot of gold and the butterflies.



We had so much fun working on this together.



I didn't get a good picture of the inside of the cake, but this one is a bad picture of the cake when I made it for Abby's 8th birthday. Appropriate for a Mormon girl's 8th birthday, no? (I Like to Look For Rainbows . . .)



Nana's "Browned Butter" Buttercream Frosting

• 1 stick salted butter
• 1 pound powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• enough milk to make it a spreadable consistency

1. Melt the butter on the stove, and keep it on the heat long enough for the butter to get light golden brown.
2. With an electric mixer, mix in the powdered sugar and vanilla
3. Add enough milk to make the frosting the consistency you want