Experiment 04; 06.03/04.11 - Layered Rainbow Cake.

So.. Let me up front with you, reader...

My experiences in baking cakes amounts to throwing box cake mix in a rectangular pan, baking, frosting, and serving it from said pan and going about my day. (or night. Whatever)

So when I started looking up things to bake that would be a challenge, my naive ass thought baking a /layered/ cake of assorted colors  PLUS frosting .. oh man. Baking things, I can get in on. I was surprised at how the layers came out; really . More even then I expected!

The colors were awesome O_O.. (I had no idea they made gel food coloring)

The frosting part of this I MUST work on. I had no idea what to do; despite reading a few online tutorials I clearly missed something, not to mention I am lacking in certain utensils that are recommended for the icing of a cake.Z

I chose to go with store bought frosting (Duncan Hines Walmart special. hayyyy~) instead of making my own. The main reason being my mixer dosn't work and is in the process of being replaced. (hell yeah Sunbeam!) and I don't fancy mixing frosting by hand presently.

So this started out pretty simple, and for 97 % of the experiment, remained thusly.

This is what my kitchen looks like before I cook - it quickly becomes a shambles. But I dont have an after picture, cause I clean as I go. Eff washing dried, caked on batter and frosting off my bowls.

This started out simple.

It's hard I find, to screw up a box of cake mix, even when you double it.

Not going to lie..

This was.. the..

BEST part..

Key thing here. Flour and grease the shit out of your pans. Its not hard.

 It makes popping these guys out of the pan so much easier.. so so much <3 LOOK at the colors..

I only bought two pans; which was more then sufficient. The colors amused me to no end.

I dont have any pictures of the progress of frosting. You only get this beastly thing, and the two below it. If it's obvious the final two images don't look 'good', I didn't take them. I had no time to snap the desired shots as the cake was by then at it's destination, Gramma's. It felt somehow rude to snatch a slice away and say 'GIMME THIS. I NEED PICS'. I didnt eat any; i wasn't feeling up to the sugar fest.

And this thing, is what I had after I frosted it.

The frosting had it's desired effect - Hide the colors.  The colors did their job also. "omg, colors". It reminded me strongly of a Boards Of Canada song. Baked, layered and frosted; and served on a plate.

The flavor was, I imagine typical of a white cake, the frosting was vanilla which well, was sweet as hell (yeah, I licked the spatula. That's right.) I was told it was tasty. I am still however unhappy with the frosting.

Not to mention that horrific leaning. I figure I did a few things wrong here; aside from rushing.

The layers were cool; but not stuff as a good sit in the freezer may have done them. So, I was basically stacking room temp layers of soft cake on top of each other with layers of ridiculously soft, warm frosting with no pauses between to let everything set. That was/is a damn fine lesson. So was this tutorial!

Also my tools; I had one spatula; with which I enter many journeys, but never once have I used it to frost a cake with. I may invest in a few doodads and gadgets; like.. these!

Offset spatula! it's tiny friend.

These look like they make a lot of sense. A lot. WHen you see them used in the correct sense. My mighty spatula is good for many things I see, but not exactly frosting cakes. Maybe with time.






A bench knife. I can see this being used for more then just frosting a cake.. no lie!


A giant goddamn spatula. - LOOK at that..  How can a body not have one of these O.o..

Don't mind the website I'm linking too; it's a handy one I located. It's got some recipes in there too that I must try soon. I can find most of this stuff elsewhere, I just happened to have the site up :P

So in general, the cake experiment was a success; if a little personal disappointment to myself. But, Gramma liked it, and I trust the aunt it was also made for will enjoy it also. <3