Rainbow Cake! Yay!

My good friend and fellow art-creator, Nick requested a rainbow cake for his birthday. So I delved into the world of coloring cakes for the first time for this vibrant confection. :)

I happened to have three 6" round pans and since this cake would need multiple cakes of different colors, I could more efficiently make a cake of that diameter, baking three at a time. I lined them with parchment (my first time doing this - and I gotta say it made me feel slightly more professional when removing them haha). I then made up a big batch of vanilla cake using a recipe from my cake goals inspiration, the adorable and insanely gifted Yolanda over at How to Cake It.

I eyeballed about a third of the batter into a smaller bowl and colored it with food color gel. First a yellow batch, then into its pan... then an orange batch, and into its pan... and finally a red batch. I knew I'd be leveling them later so being slightly off on amounts wasn't too bad. But I guessed fairly accurately.

I baked the red, orange, and yellow and then once they cooled enough, I removed them, cleaned the pans, and repeated everything again with a new big batch of batter for green, blue, and purple. After leveling the cakes, I gave them a drizzle of simple syrup (another tip from How to Cake It), and started on the frosting.

Look at those colorful cakes! And what pretty stacks and pretty crumb coat.

I made a massive batch of American buttercream - cuz frankly the other buttercreams intimidate me - and did the same divide and color routine, glopping on a hefty portion of each color between the layers as I stacked them up. I crumb coated the whole thing and placed it in the fridge to chill.

The next day I covered it all again with white buttercream, smoothed it, and then smushed some multicolor nonpareils (not sprinkles) into the bottom third-ish. Fun fact: "nonpareil" has like six different definitions. Look them up if you want.  :)

At that point, the cake felt like it still needed something. I knew I wanted it mostly plain on the outside so that the rainbow inside would really pop, but it just wasn't quite there yet. I was thinking of designs I've seen and ended up making a paper version of a plastic cake topper that says "Yay!" and I think it really helped finish it off. Cake completed!

Look at me trying semi-fancy backdrops, lol. And a happy birthday boy. Yay!!

I was super excited to cut into it and see how the colors turned out! I waited for Nick to arrive and then sliced into it - revealing a super vibrant rainbow inside! Nick was really happy with his birthday cake, and that's honestly what's most important. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NICK!!