“Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.”

Sometimes you just need to go all out.

Pull out all stops.

Make something beautiful.

Rainbow Cake

Six gorgeous layers.

Covered in silken soft buttercream.

Studded with bright candy.

This cake took me 2 days to make. (I made the layers a day before.)

And it was my first attempt at Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

But can I just say, when you go into something with all your heart, chances are it won’t let you down.

It didn’t 🙂

Rainbow cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting

Prep time: 5 mins per cake layer, and 5 mins for the buttercream
Cook time: 20 mins per cake layer (plus cooling), and 30 mins for the buttercream
Serves: 15-20

Ingredients:

For a single layer of the cake (Multiply into 6, for all the total amounts)

60 g plain flour, sifted

60 g butter, melted and cooled, plus more for greasing

60 g castor sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla essence

assorted food colours and decorations

For the Buttercream

10 egg whites

200 g icing sugar

200 g granulated sugar

550 g butter, softened and at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

For the cake

1. Preheat the oven to 180º C. Grease an 8-inch round cake tin. If you’re lucky enough to have more than one in the same size, you can do more than one layer at a time. If not, make one layer at a time, like me 🙂 It really helps if you bake the cake layers a day before.
2. In a mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients, followed by the wet and incorporate well. Add the colour slowly, deciding how dark or light you want it. (The colours darken slightly on baking.) Mix well.
3. Pour into the cake tin, and bake for about 20 minutes until firm to the touch. Remove from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.
4. If you’re making one layer at a time, do this 5 more times. Don’t give up! 🙂

For the Swiss meringue buttercream

(Please look at Whisk Kid’s recipe and tips. It really helped me.)

1. Gently mix the egg whites and both the sugars in a bowl. Then place the bowl on a double boiler with simmering water. Whisk well until all the sugar melts, and you have a frothy mixture (about 5 mins). Make sure the double boiler doesn’t get too hot. Keep taking it off the heat and putting it back on so that you have control over the temperature. You don’t want scrambled eggs!

2. Once well whisked, take the bowl off the heat and beat with an electric beater until you have quite stiff peaks. This is essentially a meringue mixture, and it should be glossy and white.

3. Now once you’re at this stage, slowly add the butter, once small piece at a time, and beat well. Don’t add the next piece of butter until the previous one has been fully incorporated. Beat until all the butter is incorporated.

4. Add the vanilla essence next and beat a bit more, until you have a thick and luscious mixture. The texture should look heavy, but taste light and lovely.

5. Use this to frost in between the cooled cake layers and all over the exterior of the cake. Decorate as you please 🙂