the one with the rainbow cake

Pretty much all of my family and friends know that I am no chef.  The first 18 years of my life my sweet mama & dad cooked pretty much every meal and the last 4 years, the oh so lovely Lenoir has cooked the at least 880 meals for me.  So, not great at cooking.  Which always makes it an adventure when I get inspired enough to make something.

Like when somehow out of a group of 16 girls at the beach after graduation, I was one of the 3 put in charge of cooking dinner one night.  I was responsible for the mac&cheese, the easy kind, and somehow the cardboard box it came in ended up in the pot, boiling right along with the water.  There was some screaming, but everything turned out ok.

Or the time a few weeks ago where I was forcefully pushed into dealing with the raw pork chops.  Ok, not a fan of any kind of raw meat.  I don’t know why, it just grosses me out, I get worried it’s going to slide out of my hand, and it makes me think about what I’m eating.  Just don’t like it.  So I was the one that had to touch it.  I was logically trying to minimize the amount of time I would have to actually be holding it, so as soon as I picked it up, I kinda tossed/dropped it into the pan on the stove that was already hot and ended up with scalding grease drops all over me.

So, an adventure it always is.  Today we celebrated Mimi’s 75^th birthday.  I thought it was time to try out something fun, so of course I hopped on pinterest and started searching.  That’s when I found this lovely gem. Ahhh, come to mama!

((site:  http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake This girl gives lots of good tips, so go to her site if you’re going to make it.  But beware, her recipe is a diet cake recipe, so don’t make that mistake!  I made mine the normal, non-diet way.))

Even though I know in my head that the color of cake doesn’t change the flavor, this just looks so much better than regular white cake, right?

So, I got all my stuff together.  Heck yes I used a boxed cake.  Like the instructions I was following say, Betty Crocker’s been doing it a whole lot longer than I have and I figure she’s pretty much got it figured out.

I don’t really know why I felt compelled to arrange the ingredients for a boxed cake and include a pic, but hey this is what they show in all the cooking blogs I follow.  And by that, I mainly mean the one cooking blog I follow, PW.  So it makes me feel legit to do it too 🙂

You just make the cake batter like normal, and then divide it up evenly (I just eyeballed it, I’m risky like that) and go to town with food coloring.  I was skeptical the colors would turn out as bright as I wanted them, but they did!  This is about the point in time that Erin walked in the kitch, doubted me HARD, and then just laughed her head off while watching.

Ahh, I totally do not mind cleaning dishes this pretty.

Then you just scoop out color by color and dump it into 2 pans.  Again, I was super skeptical mine would work out as well as the one on the blog I was reading, but it actually did!  It wasn’t too difficult at all.

And then they come out looking like this!  Voila!!

Remember what we talked about, that I’m not the worlds best cook.  In honor of being open and honest, I’ll be real.  I got the 2 separate cakes out of the oven and then could not figure out for the life of me how to somehow get them out of the pan (in one piece, preferably), onto the cake stand, and then sitting on top of each other and somehow iced in the middle and then all over.  So, I watched a video.  It actually wasn’t too difficult, although I did have to use almost 2 cans of frosting in order to cover up the holes & mistakes, but hey.  It didn’t cave in or crack open, so I was thankful for that.

So that was the final product.  And here’s a pic I got with the birthday girl.  Happy 75th, Mimi, I still believe you when you tell me you’re turning 16!

And here’s the inside!  Sorry the pics not too pretty, but you get the picture.  Not sure what Mimi thought of it, she was a little hesitant of a cake not being a normal cake color, but we all ate it and enjoyed it.

So overall, not too difficult, it only took this beginner baker about 2 hours total, and you get something so pretty!  This beats funfetti by FAR for me.  I’ll definitely be making it again!