Psychedelic Birthday Cake (in disguise!)

One of my good friend's/co-worker's birthday is tomorrow, so I made her a birthday cake :) She requested a "rainbow" cake like the one I made for my birthday back in October.  I made the cake, expecting it to look like the one i made before... but it turned out looking more psychedelic than rainbow like! For the design, I decided it would be really cool to make it look like a simple/elegant birthday cake on the outside, and totally outrageous/fun on the inside.  Since her favorite color is purple, I decided to make it look like a birthday gift wrapped in purple wrapping paper, with a white bow.

Things you will need

• (2) Boxes of white cake mix ~there is NOTHING wrong with using cake mix :) 
• (2) cans of white frosting ~ I used white because I wanted to color the frosting later, but you could use any color/flavor you want
• (6) cups ~ i use disposable cups because it gets messy and its less dishes to clean!
• (6) plastic knives ~ disposable is best because its lightweight 
• (2) baking pans ~ for this I used 8" squares but you will see later rainbow cake works better with round pans! 
• (6) Food Color Gels ~ Gel works way better than liquid but I think liquid will work too
• Purple
• Blue
• Green
• Yellow
• Orange
• Red/Pink

1. Make the cake batter according to the directions on the box (make 1 box at a time!).  Pour the batter into the cups.  Divide 1 box worth of batter into 3 plastic cups, making 2 boxes will give you 6 plastic cups of batter.  

2. Dip your plastic knife into the food coloring gel until the knife is coated, this should be a good enough amount of coloring.  Stick the knife into the cup of batter, and stir until the color is uniform throughout the batter.  

Knife with food coloring gel on it, ready to mix the batter

3. Repeat step 2 for the remaining 5 colors

6 cups of batter in different colors

4. Pour a small puddle of batter into the center of the pan, one color at a time, on top of each other in order (purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink) until your pan is about half full.

5. Fill pan #2 the same way

Pans filled with batter!

6. Let the pan sit on the counter for at least 10min before you put it in the oven.  This lets the colors seep into each other.  Gently drop the pan on the counter a few times to release any air bubble in the batter.

7. Bake according to the directions on the box.

8. After baking, cool the cakes completely

9. Gently remove the cakes from the pans by inverting them.  Level each cake (I dont have a fancy cake leveler, so i just eyeballed it.  Probably took off more cake than needed though...)

10. Squeeze frosting on top of the bottom layer, and place the top layer on top of the bottom one. Frost around the entire cake.

And there you have a beautiful rainbow cake! I decorated my cake with purple frosting.  I made a bow out of marshmallow fondant (i will save the how-to for another post). So Cute!!

Finished Cake!

So here you can see why its more of a "psychedelic" cake than a rainbow cake... it just doesnt work as well with square baking pans! it looks much more rainbow like in round pans.  Still looked great and tasted great though!!

 Happy Birthday, Erika!!