Adventures in cake, rainbows

This cake was originally made for Boo in January 2012. Portions of this post are taken from my family blog where I posted pictures from the party.  If you want to see the decor from this party check out Rainbows and Sunshine over at One To Crazy.


When I was making my cake I had not realized I wold eventually put it on a blog so they are a bit dark.



When Boo turned five she was absolutely determined that she wanted to have a rainbow birthday party, so I tried my hardest to see her vision. I started looking for cake inspiration and I found it on Marthastewart.com.

With the cake decided, I started planning out how to make it.


I had only looked at the inspiration picture and did not follow any special instructions. I am bad about just going with instinct (if you have read any of my other cake posts you already know this). Sometimes it turns out beautiful, sometimes I look at it and think I should really have followed some directions. Well, the cake kind of falls in to both of those categories. I chose to do my cake with my ten inch pans to ensure I had enough cake for all the kids and the parents. I bought seven cake mixes (well eight if you count that I always get an extra in case I mess up) and went to work. I mixed in the color for each layer and over the next six hours ended up with seven different color cakes. I realized right away that I didn't need a whole mix for each color, but I kept going. knowing that I had intended to level the layers down anyway. The extra would give me a second cake to go to in case something happened to a layer. 



I leveled my layers down to be one inch high. Plenty small enough, right? Let's just say we will get to that later. I started making my icing using my go to buttercream recipe. I use all butter in it, delicious. After I made 18 cups of icing, I started in on the cake. This had to be the easiest cake I have ever iced. I did not have to tint any of the icing since it was meant to be white.  Each layer went on the next easily with a layer of buttercream between. I then did my crumb coat.  I already knew that I wasn't going to be doing the completely smooth cake Martha had, my cake was going to look like a cloud.  I used a Wilton #8 tip to just put different amounts of icing on the cake to make it look fluffy. When I had finished, the cake was almost nine inches tall. That was not my intention. I realized then that my layers could have gone as small as half inch and I made a mental note of this for the future. I took a picture of the cake at this stage.

This is when I went to move the cake to the cake stand I had made. I could barely lift the thing it was so heavy. Again, smaller layers are better. With my husband's help, we moved it to the cake stand I had made.  It promptly broke the stand, which was a 12 inch round piece of styrofoam that I had turned into a tutu and duct taped to the bottom of one of my glass cakestands (I was using the large portion of the stand as the base thinking it would give more stability, silly me). Luckily our hands were still under the cake and we were able to rescue it from damage (whew). After trying to readjust the foam back on to the plate, we gave up and set the foam right on the table with the tutu fanning out around it. In the end, it looked like that was how it was intended all along.

Doesn't it look like I intended it to be like this? During the party I just didn't mention that it was supposed to be higher. Notice the tablecloth? It is supposed to mimic the sky. I bought some white placemats to be clouds and bought cups, plates and utensils in all the rainbow colors.  Want to know how I made this tutu?  Click here for the tutorial.

Here is Boo blowing out her candles.  I chose a glittered blue number five and five white candles.  You can see them on the table in the picture above.

My sister was taking pictures for me and she got a rare shot of me while I was cutting the cake.  I'm usually the one behind the camera.

There was a little gasp in the room as the colors were revealed.  I grabbed my phone and quickly snapped this picture.  I actually had to fight to take a picture of the cake against all the mothers there who whipped out their cameras to snap a picture also.

My sister got the same shot from a different angle with my camera.

Here is a shot after more cake was cut away.

By the end of the party there was very little cake left.  Everyone asked to take a little home to share with spouses.


In hindsight, I should have perhaps done a test run of this cake before making the final one.  It was too big and did not slice easily.  I was very happy with how the colors inside the cake turned out.  They were all very vibrant and came out exactly how I hoped they would.  They also matched the colors of the tutu perfectly.


Thanks for stopping by!  Any questions just ask.

This cake was featured at

Creations by Kara








Handy Man, Crafty Woman

Please check out my Link Parties page to see the blogs where I may have showcased this post.  Thank you to the bloggers who host such wonderful parties.