My sister wanted to make a rainbow cake herself for Lissie's first birthday but couldn't find the time, hence a rainbow cake to welcome little Florence instead.

A couple of mistakes on this one but no major tantrums :D

The rainbow topper was super easy to make, there is a Krazy Kool Cakes tutorial to show you how. Squashing a flower cutter to make a cloud cutter... genius!

                    

A few people have asked how I baked the sponges and if I have a special set of tins for rainbow cakes. Er... no. I have two tins and this is all I can fit in my oven, so I baked two layers at a time. I usually divide my cake mix in two but as the layers could be thinner, I divided it in to three. I then coloured two parts and got them straight in to the oven to bake while I coloured the third. As the layers were thinner, they only took 20 minutes to bake and the third mix was fine covered with some cling film until it could go in. While the third layer was baking, I then made another batch of cake mix and repeated the process. 


If you're making a rainbow cake, you'll need to use gel paste food colouring. These are highly concentrated to give that rich colour and a little goes a long way. The set I have is by Rainbow Dust and I got them from The Cake Decorating Company.

The filling is a white chocolate ganache. This was actually my second attempt at a white ganache, my first was on Fred's 70th cake and it ended up in the bin after it split. The same almost happened to me again; I guess it's easier to do with white chocolate because its fat content is high? Anyway, I must have had my calm head on this time because I decided I'd try to save it. All those people that say you can't recover ganache once it's split... you lie! I managed to save mine by warming up some left over cream, adding a little at a time, and mixing continually until hey presto, it was back! I caught mine quick so maybe that helped. Some say to drain any excess oil first and and if you're out of cream, apparently warm milk also does the trick.

To be honest, I thought the white chocolate ganache was disgusting and I don't think that has anything to do with the fact it split. I don't know what I was expecting considering I don't like white chocolate but for me it was horribly sickly sweet. I know ganache is only as good as the quality of the chocolate you put in it but I didn't skimp there so I think it's just yuk. My sister said it was fine, and Lissie still wanted seconds but I don't think I'll be making it again.

I love the little hands in this photo waiting patiently for her slice of cake

The biggest mistake I made with this cake, and I'm not sure how I haven't experienced this sooner, was to cover it with fondant right after it had been in the fridge overnight. I believe as the cake warmed up it caused condensation to form on the fondant and this made it impossibly sticky, so I struggled to smooth it. Apparently this problem is amplified with marshmallow fondant which explains why mine was so bad. I've read the trick is to chill the cake long enough to harden the frosting/ganache, but not chill the cake all the way through so I'll be more aware of this next time. Fortunately the clouds managed to disguise most of the imperfections.


The clouds are airbrushed on. I'm really enjoying my airbrush now I'm getting the hang of it. This was a really easy affect. I just cut a cloud shape out of some paper and held it against the cake, moving it around as I sprayed. My practise run on some paper actually looked better but I'm still pleased with the result. I should have worn some gloves as I had nice blue fingers after.

So I've probably waffled on long enough. I think that's about all I have to say on this one :D