Rainbow Showstopper Easter Cake.

Last Tuesday evening I was intending to go along to one of my next door Clandestine Cake Club events. Although I am one of the organisers for the Harrogate, Knaresborough and Ripon Clandestine Cake Club, I love to try and get along to neighbouring clubs’ events if I can fit them in around work, home life and baking for Sam’s Smart Cookies.

Last Tuesday was the turn of the York Central Clandestine Cake Club’s group to hold their event. It was to be an Easter themed event at York Cocoa House which I was really looking forward to. I had not been to the York Central group before and was keen to meet everyone and go in the Cocoa House.  I took ages deciding what cake to bake but narrowed it down to the absolutely stunning Rainbow Cake which was featured on April 2013’s front cover of Good Food Magazine.  I had never attempted a rainbow cake before, but the recipe looked clear enough to follow. As I was off work for the school holidays I had more time on my hands to play around with the recipes.

Here is a link to the original recipe on the BBC Good Food website: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com

Everything went to plan with the cake until it came to ice it. Although I wasn’t initialhttp://www.bbcgoodfood.comly impressed with the colours as I was worried about having to use the whole tube of Dr Oetker gel to get the strong colours.  I thought this might make the cake taste funny.  In the end I liked the pastel colours, they looked more Spring like and pretty.  I made a complete hash of the icing, for a start there wasn’t enough of it and my children had stolen the packet of Smartie Mini Eggs I had for the top of the cake. I often find sweets missing from my baking cupboard and it really upsets me. Even though to them it was a small packet, it majorly inconveniences me and as we live in a small village it is difficult to get to the shops in a hurry.  I was so upset and wound up that I ended up with a stinker of a headache and decided I couldn’t get along to the meeting after all as I had no cake worthy of taking along to a CCC event.  It was half an hour before I would have been due to leave anyway, the kitchen was a mess and there was nothing ready for dinner for the kids and hubby. I had to cancel.  After all that drama I did eventually find some leftover sugar Easter egg shapes that I’d bought for cupcake toppers so on they went on the top of the cake. Thankfully they didn’t look to0 bad but now I didn’t need the cake because I couldn’t go to the event anyway! So frustrating!

My version of the Easter Rainbow Cake as found on BBC Good Food’s website.

This is how the cake SHOULD have looked!

Look at the pictures below to see how I made this cake.

Baking the orange and pink layers of the cake. The orange layer looks more yellow!

Snot green cake mix! The second lot to go in the oven was the blue and green mixtures!

Six layers of cake all cooling on their racks. I did not make a seventh red one. I did not get the colouring right, something I need to work on in the future but at least it made pretty pastel colours!

The cake was assembled and layered with a delectable mascarpone cheese frosting. This mixed perfectly well with the flavour of the cake and wasn’t too rich or sickly.

Although the recipe said that there would be plenty of icing, I did not find this to be the case.I don’t know if I filled the layers too full but there wasn’t enough to spread around the cake.

Cut up to see the different colour layers. The cake cut beautifully without falling apart or making a mess. I liked it although I was initially disappointed because I hadn’t made the colours strong enough.

Happy Baking!

Love Sam xx