A very Simple Rainbow Cake

This year has been a huge test on my baking skills, and I've been constantly chosen to be the birthday baker. So as my time in university draws to an end, I decided to end the last birthday cake with a bunch of colours shoved into one cake - the really lazy rainbow cake!

What most bakers do is, with much TLC, bake a layer of cake in a sandwich tin in a different colour. I decided to skip all that hassle, and merge it together to create some chaos. 

The idea is simple. Make the batter for a sponge/white cake and split it into several bowls. Colour each one in a different colour and shove it back into a tin and bake it. Yes, I make it sound crude but you'll get it easier that way. So here's the recipe for a Simple White Cake, and then the procedure will explain the process of making the rainbow cake:

Ingredients

•  1 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup butter (approximately 250g)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups of self-raising flour, sifted (alternatively use all-purpose flour and 1 3/4 tsp of baking powder)
• 1/4 cup milk

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees/Gas Mark 4. Use an 8x2 inch pan or a 9x1.5 inch pan. 
2. Using a large mixing bowl, mix softened butter with sugar until fluffy. Add the sifted flour alternately with the eggs and mix. Finally, add the milk to get a smooth batter.
3. Separate the batter into as many bowls as you want colours. So if you want 5 colours, split the batter into 5 batches. Easiest way of doing this is just getting the three prime colours to make blue, red, yellow, green and orange batter.
4. Then like a marble cake, alternate the batter into the cake tin. Your cake will end up with chunks of colours as seen below. You can also swirl the batter to create a more marbled effect.
5. Finally, bake the cake in the preheated oven for 30 - 45 minutes until an insert toothpick comes out clean.

So that's all fine and dandy. For the icing, I used a buttercream icing:

• Just mix 150g softened butter with 250g sifted icing sugar and 1-2tsp of milk and 1 tsp of vanilla extract. I usually just mix the icing until it forms stiff peaks.

Then you can colour the cake whatever colour you want! I opted for a sunny orangey pink colour which was more of an accident than a colour. The best part of course comes when you cut into the cake to see all the pretty colours!