Rainbow Cake

First, I have to give credit where credit is due. I first saw this cake over at MckMama's blog. She had a little shindig at her house and someone named Amanda brought the cake, she begged Amanda for the recipe seeing that everyone was begging her to get it, and she shared it. I tried it, it worked, and here it is.

Rainbow Cake

2 boxes of white cake mix
Food Coloring in six colors (I used Americolor Soft Gel Paste)

Frosting

4-8 oz packages of cream cheese
1 cup butter
5-6 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

You might want to have a third box of white cake mix on hand just in case.

To prepare the cake:

Prepare the first mix according to the package. Separate the prepared batter into three separate dishes. I ended up with a little over 1 1/2 cups per bowl with my batter. Add food coloring until you achieve the desired color (purple, blue, and green this time).

I'd recommend doing a really good grease and flour job on your pans, because I did it lightly the first time. I almost lost my first purple cake and I did lose my first green one. It was completely stuck to the bottom of the pan and was destroyed when I tried to get it out.

Cook according to package directions, but remember that you have a little less batter in each pan so you might not need to bake them as long. I almost forgot that part.

During the first box I broke one egg on the floor and one in the sink. Then I ended up destroying the green cake, which I didn't even know yet.

While the first three cakes were cooking I washed up my dishes and started working on the second cake mix. Before I could put the food coloring in I had already destroyed the green cake, so I did one of them green, one yellow, and one orange, although it should have been yellow, orange, and red.

Good thing I did an about-face and picked up that third box of white cake mix as an after thought on Monday night's grocery trip just in case.

(Then I started washing up my dishes again and made the third cake mix. During this wash-and-dry, Sparky dropped one of the heavy stoneware bowls and it broke, plus it nicked up the wood floor pretty good. What can you do but clean it up and keep on going and chalk it up to another Rainbow Cake casualty.)

I went ahead and made two red cakes and left one plain with the last batch. I decided if one red one was damaged I'd have another one to fall back on since I didn't have any more boxes of cake mix. And the red cake was the one that took the most food coloring to get it a deep enough color.

To make the frosting:

Mix your room temperature cream cheese and room temperature butter together well with your mixer. Add in the vanilla. Then slowly add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, up to 5 cups. Taste the frosting and see if it's sweet enough for you, and if it's not, then add the other cup. Personally, I did the requisite tasting knowing all along I'd just add the other cup.

To assemble the cake:

Start by taking a large bread knife and leveling off the tops of the cakes (you can even tell in the picture where I did this). They need to be flat and level for this to work correctly. Then place the purple layer on your cake plate, place frosting on top, and spread it with a flat knife where it runs over the edge a little. Place the blue layer on top of the frosting, spread frosting on top where it runs over the edge, then smooth the frosing all the way around the edges (as if you had a two-layer cake).

You must now refrigerate the cake for about 2 hours for the frosting to set (or put it in the freezer for 1 hour if you have a place big enough). This is very important since the cake is heavy and the frosting is squishy at this point.

After you've waited the appropriate amount of time, put on the green layer, frost, yellow layer, frost, do the sides like before, and stick it in to firm up again for 2 hours. Then do the orange and red layers and you're done.

Except for anything fun you do on the top, like sticking 44 slim candles that leave ash all over the cake and table when Hubby blows them out.

Cut the cake, hopefully get some ooohs and aahs, thankyouverymuches, this is the best cake I've ever hads...

Just enjoy it, because it really is good!