Tuesday 13 March 2018

Baking a rainbow cake...It was a bit of a fail.

Over the half term holidays I bought a Bakedin Rainbow Cake Mix it was one of those things we never got around to doing....I received a fabulous stand mixer to review so needed to make something fancier than a cake out of a packet mix....Last week the kids were off school and Ellie wanted to do some baking so I thought this would be easy for her to make.... 


To make you will need:

For the cake

4 medium eggs
250g unsalted butter + 20g for greasing
80ml milk

For the icing
500g icing sugar,
250g unsalted butter
40ml milk

Hardware

Round baking tip approx 15cm or 20cm diameter
Wire rack
Baking paper

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan assisted/gas mark 4. Cut your baking paper to fit the base of the tin, securing with a little butter if required.

2. In a mixing bowl, combine 60g of soft butter with the contents of bag 1 until it forms a crumb consistency. Add 1 egg and 20ml of milk, mixing until smooth and creamy. Pour the mixture into a prepared tin and smooth out.

3. Bake the cake for 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean with no wet mixture on it. Leave in the tin for a few minutes then remove and place on a wire rack to cool fully.

4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 with bag 2, 3, and 4 using a clean bowl to mix in each time.

5. If you are making your own icing, cream 250g of soft butter in a large bowl until smooth. Add 500g of icing sugar gradually and mix well. Slowly add 40ml of milk until the butter cream is smooth but still enough to hold its shape.

6. Place the green cake layer on a plate or cake board, spoon around 4 tbsp of the icing onto the cake and spread evenly to the edges. Place the yellow cake on top. Continue alternating layers of icing and cake, using the orange and then the red layer.

7. Use the remaining icing to cover the top and sides of the cake, using the flat edge of a knife to smooth the surface.

I set Ellie to work and she did great....She measured everything and did all the mixing...I was only there to put the mixture in the tins and put them in the oven....


She had great fun but I did try to make things easier by not putting the baking paper in the base of the tin....The mixture stuck a little when it was baked in the tins and the layers were a little broken....You couldn't really tell though when it was covered in icing.....

We used ready made icing for inside the cake....It was a little hard to spread....We should have made our own to begin with.


It was a little wonky, the colours weren't as bright as I thought they were going to be and it was a little crumbly but cake is cake....

I made our own butter icing to go on the tops and the sides and it was so much easier to spread than the ready made one.....


It is far from perfect but I don't think it's bad for a first try....It tastes good though and that's all that matters....

I paid £5 for this cake mix which is way more than I'd normally pay and to be honest it really isn't worth it. It is on offer now for £3.75 from Tesco in case you did want to give it a try. We are going to try making our own from scratch with no ready mixes. I know I have plenty of food colouring in the cupboard so we can make each layer brighter too!

Have you made anything like this before?

17 comments :

  1. So pleased it went a little wrong , reality check blogging is great , dont you just hate the vision of perfection yummy mummy blogs , where with a toddler helping they produce perfection ...lol

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  2. Haha not quite the cake in the picture but better than I would probably do

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  3. Oh Kim, I am on a diet but I need a slice of this right now! Yummy. #TriedTested

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  4. I've made a sort of rainbow cake but I couldn't be bothered to make each layer a different colour so I just did a swirl of colours. I think it's hard to colour your sponges and you need a really good food colouring, I'd go for a past rather than a liquid.
    Your cake may be wonky but it still looks pretty when iced, and as long as it tastes good then that's all that matters really, that and having fun making it xx

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  5. Very interesting, thank you. I know you have to get special food colourings if you want bright colours, and I'd be wary of bought mixes possibly not using the right ones or right quantities. Still, this one hasn't come out too badly, and as long as it tasted good, that's the most important thing!

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  6. You can't beat a homemade cake even though it doesn't look like the cake on the packet. Great that it still tasted good though :o)

    #TriedTested

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  7. I have always looked at these and thought they looked amazing, however, one I do not have the patience, two, Freddie doesn't really like cake, and three I can't imagine how many additives are in there!! But I think you are being a bit hard on yourself yours looks amazing #triedtested

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  8. Oh that actually looks really yummy! Way better than any of my baking attempts ha!

    Stevie x

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  9. Good luck making your own, you will need more food colour than you might imagine to get it really bright. #TriedTested

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  10. Think it looks great!!! You havent seen my attempt - more practice = more cake !!!!

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  11. I love homemade cake! I think it's great you've shown the real colours, mine would look way worse! #TriedTested

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  12. Bet it still tasted nice though. I made rainbow biscuits once and the colours were not really bright either. I think modern food colours has less additives and is less colourful as a result. Probably better for us though!

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  13. This looks fantastic. I have made a rainbow cake before but a kit would be fantastic x

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  14. I think it looked pretty good for a first attempt. I've never tried to make rainbow cake but I would probably go down the route of doing my own cake mix with food colouring for each layer. Glad it tasted good though - that's what's most important! #triedtested

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  15. Well it looked fun! I wouldn't mind having a go but with my own mixes. It looked very tasty though!

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  16. It is the taste that counts. I’ve never tried making a rainbow cake

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