Cake'n'Bake Wednesday: Rainbow Cake

Hello folks, and welcome to the latest feature of The Princess and the Cake: Cake'n'Bake Wednesdays! Back in October of last year, I decided to reach out to like-minded bake-a-holics in my local area, and to cut a long story short, the Cambridge Cake'n'Bake Club was born. We're a group of bakers, mostly amateur, some early-stage professionals, who get together once a month to share recipes, hints and baking tips whilst scoffing our faces full of the baked treats we've made. Simple really!

Anyway, we have a shared blog where we post our recipes (www.camcakeclub.blogspot.co.uk if you're interested) but since I decided to move the focus of this blog away from the movie challenges and make it more about my baking in general, I thought I'd start sharing my Cake'n'Bake Club recipes here also. Cake'n'Bake Club meetings take place on the first Wednesday of every month (in fact, it's our first birthday party tonight!) so I decided to turn the same day into my Cake'n'Bake Club feature on this blog - thus Cake'n'Bake Wednesdays! Some months there will only be one post, some months there will be more - it depends how many things I baked for any given month! I think that's enough jibber jabber for now, so if you want to find out more about Cambridge Cake'n'Bake Club, please click on the tab above, and if you'd like to see my recipe, please read on!

For our first ever club meeting in November 2011, we went with the "Signature Bake" as a theme - that is, bakers were asked to bake and bring something they thought represented them - either the first recipe they ever bakes, or one they'd come to be renowned for, and for me it could only ever be one thing:

Rainbow cake!

Firstly, I apologise from the poopy photos - I had no idea we'd be publishing a blog (never mind two blogs!!) so I didn't really give the cake photography the time and effort it deserves. Secondly, I wanted to point out that my cake got a bit squished in transit - please ignore the bottom half of the frosting in the first photo!

OK, before I type the recipe, time for a little cake-science. The reason the colours of the cake curl around each other is purely down to the fact it was baked in a bowl! when baking in a Pyrex bowl it's the bottom and sides that cook first, and as they cook they also rise, forcing the top colours down into the middle of the bowl - pretty cool, right? If you were to bake this recipe in a flat tin, your lines would all be even and you wouldn't get the swirls (the cake would still look and taste great though!)

Ingredients

For the cake:
300g margarine
300g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
300g self raising flour
2 tbsp lemon juice
red, yellow, and blue food colourings (I used gel food colourings as I find you get a vibrant colour without watering down your mixture!)

For the frosting:
150g shortening
300g icing sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
black food colouring
edible glitter (I used "white hologram")

Prep time: 30 mins
Bake time: 50-60mins
Serves 8-10

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a round Pyrex (or other oven-proof) bowl with foil.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until creamy. Beat in one of the eggs until well combined, then fold in a third of the flour. Repeat until all of the eggs and flour have been used up and you have a thick, smooth batter. Gently fold in the lemon juice.
3. Separate the mixture into 6 even portions, and colour each red, orange, yellow, blue, green and purple. (In cake-land, indigo and violet merge to become "purple".) As a reminder, you mix a red and yellow to make orange, blue and yellow to make green and blue and red to make purple!
4. Carefully place the red mixture into the bottom of the bowl and level with the back of a spoon. Layer each mixture on top of the other, spreading gently to the edges after each layer.
5. Bake for 50 - 60 mins, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool in the bowl for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Once the cake has cooled prepare the frosting. Mix the icing sugar into the shortening a little at a time until a smooth paste has formed. Mix in the lemon juice to taste, then spread evenly onto the cake. Place a little black food dye into the remaining frosting, then pipe a line across the cake. Add another drop of black colouring into the remaining frosting, and pipe a second line next to the third. Repeat for another two lines so you end up with a grey-scale rainbow. Sprinkle with the edible glitter to finish then serve!

Happy Thoughts
x