Rainbow Cake

A cake that I do several versions of for different occasions. The one that I’m sharing with you today was what I had made with our dear friend Vasu. He had visited us in Delhi in October 2017 and I was baking to celebrate 10 years of ATA . I had been wondering about what to make and he had come up with the suggestion to do this cake as he wanted to ice it with me. Today marks his second death anniversary. And we’ve still not gotten over it. This cake is so much how he was, colourful, fun, surprising and most of all he could make you feel better no matter what. This is not so much of a recipe post but more of tribute to our dear friend. We miss you Vasu!

Ingredients

  1. 2 cups flour
  2. 1 tsp Baking soda
  3. 1 ½  cup Milk
  4. 1 cup Castor sugar
  5. 1 tsp Vinegar
  6. 1 pinch salt
  7. 3/4th cup Vegetable / neutral flavoured oil
  8. Gel food colouring (I used  yellow, red, blue and magenta to create 7 shades)
  9. Few drops vanilla essence
  10. Rind of one lemon

Method

  1. Butter an 8 inch cake tin
  2. Pre – heat the oven at 175 degree Celsius
  3. Sift together flour and baking soda
  4. Mix together milk, sugar, vinegar and oil
  5. Add the dry ingredients in the wet ingredients in 2- 3 batches
  6. Mix well till smooth. Add the vanilla essence and lemon rind.
  7. Divide the batter equally in a few smaller bowls.( I planned to do 8 shades in all, 7 of the rainbow and plain white to separate them so I divided it into 8)
  8. Mix a few drops of the colour into each bowl to make the desired share card.
  9. Pour the bowl of the batter into the center of the cake tin. Straight away pour a few spoons of the white in the center of the coloured batter and then the next shade of the rainbow. you can start at any end and pour the colours in alternate with the white. Continue doing this until all the mixture has been used and you have gradually added the colours as you went along.
  10. You will end up with alternate rings of batter in the tin in a clean striped rainbow.
  11. Bake for 35 minutes or until the toothpick comes out clean
  12. Cool the cake on wire rack.
  13. When the cake is completely cooled upturn the cake slice through the middle to create two layers of cake and fill with butter cream icing. First spread a thin amount in the center portion of the cake. Pipe a thick ring along the edge of the cake and fill the center. Place the other half of the cake on top.
  14. Crumb coat the cake and place in the fridge to cool.
  15. Remove the cake and cover with butter cream icing.
  16. Add some colour to your icing and decorate as you want.
  17. Chill and serve cold.
Mix a few colours till you get the desired shade
Pour softly and slowly in the center of the tin so you get even layers
If you calculate correctly you will get nice even layers
We then iced it together
We danced a little
The result of our hardwork
Perfectly coloured rainbow edged flowers
Equally gorgeous on the inside
It was a wonderful evening spent with friends. We had the best time. I wish we could have had more evenings like this was. I wish you could have known our daughter. I wish I had known the last hug goodbye would be the last one so I wouldn’t have let go. We miss you Vasu. I’m sure you are the life of the party where ever you are.