Rainbow Cake for the Rainbow Baby

When my oldest turned 4 last month, his Thomas cake was a huge hit and he was ready to help me pick the theme for his little brother's first birthday cake. When I asked him what I should make, the answer came immediately. "Mommy, you need to make him a rainbow cake!" It was exciting and intimidating all at the same time. I've been wanting to take on a rainbow cake since I saw this one on the Whisk Kid blog, but I never had the right opportunity, nor was I brave enough.

I knew it was going to be a daunting task to decorate, so I used box mixes. I didn't want to have to hang my head in shame, so I looked up ways to make box mixes taste "homemade". Following instructions I Googled, I added an extra egg, replaced water with milk and oil with melted butter. There were lots of weird lumps and huge air bubbles and an eggy smell.  The layers also came out really uneven due to shrinkage in the pan and that's never happened to me before. It tasted fine, but I'm pretty sure it would have been just as good (if not better) straight out of the box. Don't get it twisted, I did not say better than scratch :) Next time I'll know better and leave well enough alone. This is what I ended up with prior to leveling off the layers. I made a smash cake at the same time.

Overall, this cake was fun, fun, fun. Who doesn't love to play with all those beautiful colors?

I used this video from the Woodland Bakery to decorate. I messed up on the very first line, so I turned the cake around and put a rainbow on the other side. I messed that up too, so each cake was a double rainbow. This is what I got. 

So I can't pipe to save my life, but check out the inside! I was super proud of that. Horizontally, the layers were pretty even and the colors so vibrant. My only issue was the shrinkage I discussed before so you can see extra blue frosting on the right and left sides. Rather than take a knife to it to even it up, I went with the even it with frosting option. Like someone told me, "Less cake or more frosting. This doesn't seem like a hard choice". 

Fun facts - since I used butter in the box mixes and all the frosting, I decided to add up the butter and sugar content. Three batches of buttercream meant 6 sticks of butter and 6 pound (or 3 bags) of powdered sugar. I also made 3 boxes of cake and there were about 4 sticks of butter in them. So 10 sticks of butter and 6 pounds of sugar in the two cakes I made. Because you should always be thinking of calorie content while making cake :)

Happy first birthday to my littlest Rainbow baby!