Well as most of you probably already know that I took on the challenge of baking Little A’s 1st Birthday cake. This was actually after I found someone who would bake the perfect cake that I wanted – but one day just sitting I got this wacky idea stuck in my head that I must give it a go!
Plus the idea of spending £100 on a cake began to haunt me, truthfully speaking, even though I wasn’t the one who was going to buy it as my brother was going to it just didn’t begin to sit right with me. As a parent, I put my responsible hat on and thought that the £100 could have so much better use for Little A rather than a cake that’d be scoffled down and then forgotten.
I have baked before but not for that many people and I have never been daring with baking either. The baking part of it was not as daunting as decorating it and making it look perfect!
I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t the most perfect journey I began. There were trips and failures along the way which I thankfully thinking quick on my feet overcame.
So this post isn’t a guide on how to make a Rainbow cake, although I will be including the recipe I attempted to follow, this post is basically me trying to explain that what you set your mind too, just go for it, even if you doubt yourself!
One hurdle that I needed to cross was the actual time needed to spend to make this thing – I don’t have a big oven and not much baking utensils so I tried to make do with what I had, this meant splitting the recipe in three and repeating the methods again.
I baked two layers on Wednesday, there are no pictures of this to show off as I was in a very sleep deprived state. Well I do have one picture to share.
Here you are seeing a picture of a rainbow made out of fondant which I thought was going to stand on my cake but then realised after some googling and YouTubing that I actually needed that thing which I can’t remember the name of now, but it turns your fondant into play dough and keeps it strong? I tried other methods but they just weren’t working for me.
So I just went to bed, hoping that I’ll dream of a solution.
The next day was going to be a challenge as I had to bake 4 layers and assemble the cake together. I also had to venture out in the evening for training so knew that I had time against me. My Dad came over to keep Little A entertained so I had no distractions.
By 1pm all the layers were ready and set to be assembled. Now for the difficult part, put it together! Of course I had to trim the layers, otherwise the cake would have been very tall. I didn’t have those fancy cake trimmers, just my good old knife to assist me, all was going well until the green cake cracked but hurrah for buttercream that I managed to glue it together (nobody noticed, so that’s a win!) .
I then had to apply a coating of buttercream as you can see below, not a pretty sight. It seemed like my buttercream was too drippy but I just got on with it and refrigerated it till the next day.
I had thought about evening out the sides but was exceptionally frightened that the whole thing would fall apart and hoped that the fondant would cover up the noticeable blemishes.
Came Friday, the day before the party and I still had no idea how on earth was I going decorate this big thing! So I thought I would just apply the fondant and see how it goes…
And behold!
Every bakers worst nightmare, the fondant was too small! I sat there for a few minutes, thinking how I would overcome this challenge, should I take it off? Should I leave it like that? I’m sure no one would notice right?
So I began to set the fondant like that, onto the cake and luckily I had some extra white fondant which I swirled around the bottom half to cover the partially naked cake. But of course it looked dreadful and my mistakes were being highlighted quite extravagantly.
Instead of wasting my time worrying over it, I decided to get on with decorating the top of the cake which I decided would be a flat rainbow with Little A’s name at the bottom.
(Yes, there’s no orange, I had originally bought a supermarket branded food colourings but then read bad reviews so in a haste ended up ordering the wrong set and had no time for an exchange or return!)
Then a light bulb switched on in my head and my eyes lay on the multi coloured trimmings of cake! I then turned those trimmings into crumbs, creamed the ugly bottom half of the cake with buttercream and just literally threw the crumbs all over, praying that it’d turn into a beautiful thing.
As you can see…
So there you have it! This was the first time I baked a layer cake, first time decorated a cake to this extent and first time played around with food colouring but I did it! Yes, I’m giving myself an ego boost right now because a month on, I’m still pretty impressed with what I did even if it was a kind of wonky but hey it was made with love!
The big reveal…
It probably would have been better looking if it had the right colours or the link and yellow layer switched places. But for a first time (without any trials) I think I did pretty good… do you agree?
I used Cupcake Jemma’s Rainbow cake recipe.
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I have always had a passion for baking especially cakes and have decided to pursue this further and practice more frequently now. So if you’d like a peek into my baking adventures, do let me know below and I’ll include a separate section on my blog just for my creations and of course failures!
I think this cake looks great! I love the idea of using cake crumbs around the bottom of the cake, brilliant idea. Really well done, I think this is a real achievement and it's great that it's motivated you to bake more x
It looked great! Congratulations! #TwinklyTuesday
That looks fantastic. Well done! #Dreamteam
I love cake. I love rainbows. This looks flippin amazing! Well done for the quick thinking with the coloured crumbs! Thanks for linking to #DreamTeam Soffy x
I really had to laugh reading this because I baked a rainbow cake for my Mums 60th in February. My cream cheese frosting made the FINISHED cake look like your butter cream stage image. It was UGLY. It also lost all it's colour due to the wrong colouring and baking process, causing me to use way too much colouring and a rancid chemical taste.
Needless to say I have been put off trying a rainbow cake again – but yours looks amazing! I love your ingenuity to jump over the hurdles you faced!
Thanks so much for sharing with #coolmumclub
I think you did really well, especially for a first attempt. I've never tried to make a rainbow cake and am always impressed by anyone that manages to do so. Using the multicoloured crumbs was a genius idea! 🙂 #coolmumclub
That looks amazing I take my hat off to anyone that can bake as I’ll hold my hands up and admit I’m terrible at it!
Melanie | http://www.frasersfunhouse.com
Ah it turned out so nice!! My mum made a similar one for my birthday years ago and I remember just how long it took her. Well done! ☺️
That turned out so amazing! I was nervous when I saw the buttercream but you recovered nicely! #DreamTeam
Brilliant cake! My heart sinks when I have to make a birthday cake as the kids always have high expectations that I can't fulfil but you did an amazing job! #coolmumclub
I made a rainbow cake for my daughter's 7th birthday – two years ago. It turned out amazing. Yours look so yummy #blogcrush