You Create: Rainbow Cake

See this cake?

It's a cute little cake. I put the names of all the children who were going to be here yesterday's names on it. But this cake, it has a secret...

It was so fun to cut it open.

So if you want to make a fun rainbow cake, here's how:

1. Mix up 2 boxes of white cake mix (one at a time so they don't sit too long before baking).

2. Divide cake mix into bowls (1 cup per bowl--Duncan Hines standard cake mix makes about 5 cups).

3. Tint each bowl a different rainbow color. I used standard food coloring for red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. For indigo I used standard blue mixed with Wilton's Violet icing color. And just the violet for the, well, violet. I've found mixing red and blue food coloring turns the icing pretty gray.

4. Bake each cake in a round pan. I decreased the baking time to 17 minutes, but honestly I think 15 would have been sufficient. I have 3 pans in the same size, so it did require 3 sets of baking.

5. I made some cupcakes out of the extra batter--my kids and husband weren't too put out to help dispose of these for me.

6. Cool each layer for a bit. Than stack, icing between layers. If you're using store bought icing, it will take 2 containers by the time you ice the whole thing--it's slightly taller than the standard two layer cake.

7. Next, ice the whole cake (I iced it in standard (Duncan Hines) icing) to hide your surprise! Decorate if desired--I made my own icing for that.

You'll need: 2 cake mixes (or your own recipe for white cake), 2 containers of icing, standard set of food coloring, violet icing color, and a little extra time, since you'll have to rotate your cake pans through the oven.

I read about the idea on another blog last year, so I'm not that creative. I made it a little differently, in specific I didn't take the time to freeze (I didn't go back to look at that post until I linked it--I guess my memory isn't that good from a year ago) and I added a layer. There would have been much gnashing of teeth from the professor if I had failed to separate indigo and violet and used only one purple color. It was cute plus Kate thought it was exciting to be in on the surprise. It was fun to bake the cake, but even more fun to share it with some wonderful friends!