Rainbow layer birthday cake

My brother in law turned 18 this week and I was tasked (happily) with making the birthday cake. I convinced myself that 18 wasn't too old for a fun cake and set to it.

I made 6 layers of sponge, each one a different colour using a traditional victoria sponge cake recipe. either use your favourite sponge recipe, or when I make a sponge I always weigh the eggs, then use that weight for the flour, butter and sugar.

I used 6 inch sandwich tins. To make this cake without loads of washing up and doing the cakes in batches you either need 6 cake tins (which stupidly I have) or you can use those tin foil disposable flan tins.

I made a large batch of cake mix and divided it as equally as I could into 6 to add the colour. So you also need 6 bowls to add this different food colourings to the cake mix.

Ingredients
cake:
10 eggs
600g self raising flour (sieved)
600g sugar
600g butter
6 colours of food colouring (I use gel colours as they give a good depth of colour)

Butter icing:
500g butter
1kg icing sugar
3 tbls milk

Strawberry jam for layers.

• Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C. 
• Grease and line the cake tins.
• Cream the butter and sugar (I used my kenwood chef to save my arms).
• One egg at a time beat them into the mix (adding a tbls of flour with each egg to stop it curdling).
• Once all the eggs combined add the remaining flour and mix until combined.
• Scrape down the bowl and mix again to make sure it is all combined.
• Dived the cake mixture into 6 different bows.
• Add the food colouring, If using the gel colouring use a tooth pick to stir the gel around a bit then stir that tooth pick into the cake mix to get the colour into the mixture. 
• Stir the cake well to get an even colour and spoon into a greased and lined cake tin.
• Bake for 15-20 minutes

• Let the cakes cool in the tins for 5 minutes then on a cooling rack until completely cool.
• Cream the butter, icing sugar and milk to make the butter icing.
• Dab some butter cream onto the cake plate/board that you are using to hold the cake still.
• Spread a little butter cream onto the later, and a little jam on the bottom of the next layer and sandwich them together. Keep doing this with all the layers.

I did the colours of the rainbow, but I think I put a bit too much yellow food colouring in, as the yellow layer looked a bit dark and almost orange, so I didn't put that sponge layer in as it would have looked the same as the next layer.

• Do a crumb coat (sometimes called a dirty coat), This is where you cover the cake with butter icing but only use a very thin layer. Then chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. This is done so that any crumbs that (will) get mixed in with the butter icing won't show on the final coat.
• After the cake has chilled and the icing feels firm add the remaining butter cream for the finishing layer.  

With any luck you will have a very lovely cake!

Happy Cooking

xoxo