Let Me Welcome You With Rainbow Cake

I like to bake, so let me show you one of my favorite projects. This cake was made with my close friend Stephanie, who also took the fabulous photos. What was the occasion, you ask? Well, we just wanted to make a pretty cake, and that's a good enough reason for me.

Ingredients include a ton of butter, a basket of egg whites, and copious amounts of food coloring.  Note the single 7-inch pan. Yes, each layer was baked one at a time. 

On to the batter! I love using vanilla bean paste. It's not all that more expensive than pure vanilla, but it's so much cheaper than vanilla beans. The paste adds great flavor, plus the vanilla bean seed speckles are gorgeous. 

Oops! I swear, it wasn't me!

Now let's swirl in the food coloring. I used a combination of Americolor pastes and regular supermarket food coloring. The pastes are great because they add strong color without impacting the consistency of the batter by adding too much liquid.

The blue and purple layers were made by modifying my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe from Joy of Baking.  The flavor was great, but the consistency was too gummy and dense for what I was looking for.

The green and yellow layers definitely the best flavors. The cake was moist, fluffy, and delicate. The recipe - my new favorite vanilla cake - was Sweetapolita's Classic Vanilla Butter Cake.

Finally, the red and orange batters. The recipe was Sweetapolita's Vanilla Buttermilk Cake. It was good, but texture-wise it didn't hold a candle to the butter cake. 

Each layer was baked, frozen, and stacked. We made a giant batch of Swiss Meringue Buttercream and slathered it on. The great thing about Swiss Meringue Buttercream: if it curdles, you're doing it right. The cake was frosted, which we didn't get pictures of because we were far too excited to finally cut into it.

Would you like a slice?

I love how bright and sunny this cake is. Enjoy!