My birthday was last month, and this time I decided to try something new. You could say this project was inspired by Michaels craft stores. I’m going to preface this by saying I do not bake, because if I bake something, then I have to eat it! And I really don’t need to be eating all that. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve baked anything by myself, and then on the other hand the number of times I’ve helped anyone else bake. But I do love cake. I guess baking is okay for special occasions (the first crack in my resolve… what have I done….). So don’t be intimidated, because this is something anyone can do! Craft stores these days make it so easy.
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I first wandered into the baking aisle at Michaels because I was looking for edible glitter. I didn’t end up using the Pearl Dust for this project, but it’s very pretty. I saw all the icing decorations at the store and a set of trays meant specifically for rainbow or ombre cakes using one package of cake mix, and I thought, “Wow! Even I could make a cute rainbow cake!” I had leftover food coloring in my pantry from when my mother-in-law made mochi, so it was the perfect excuse to use it.
The trays actually come with recipes for a few different kinds of cake, but for me who usually doesn’t bake, using cake mix is more efficient, because I don’t have to deal with leftover ingredients. Same goes for the frosting. Of course, I had to get all complicated and decided to mix cake flavors, because I really like strawberry lemon cake. I don’t recommend this, because it was a pain to measure out, and then I had so much extra cake. Later I noticed that Michaels also sells tiny bottles of flavoring, so you could use ONE box of white cake (which they also sell), and then add flavoring to each layer separately. Noted for next time.
The pink layer is strawberry, orange is strawberry and lemon, yellow is lemon, and green and blue are vanilla. The blue probably would have come out a little nicer if I had used a plain white cake. I tried to neutralize the yellow in the cake by adding a drop of pink coloring to the blue. Each layer only required a few drops of color.
Mix, bake, cut the layers so they’re level, stack them up with frosting in between, and then slap the rest of the frosting on the outside and the decorations on top. Done! So easy. I probably should have cut the sides before frosting, too (pretend you don’t see the part where it’s crooked). So then I had all this leftover cake batter….
I had used half a package of strawberry mix, half a package of vanilla, and an entire package of lemon, so I had one whole package worth of extra batter when I was done. I mixed it all together, threw a half cup of rainbow sprinkles in there, and baked a simple second cake. I actually had some confectioners sugar in my pantry, so I made my own cream cheese frosting to go with it. I STILL have some of this cake leftover in my fridge.
Then, of course, there’s the extra cake from cutting the layers so they’re even. I crumbled them up, mixed them together, and mashed them into cake balls. Or you could just eat them. 😉
I am so pleased with how pretty the cake turned out, and how easy it was to make. The cake tasted good too, but that depends on whether you like standard cake mix. You could certainly use your own recipe. Now I’m inspired to try a bunch of different variations! Dangerous….