A few people have asked how I made the rainbow cake for Susannah’s birthday, so thought I would do a quick tutorial. I just kind of made it up as I went and hoped for the best. I wasn’t entirely sure that the colors wouldn’t all run together, so was pleasantly surprised by the fun finished product.
I did search for a tutorial online but all I found were cakes that required each color to be baked as a seperate layer. The results were stunning, but I wasn’t quite ready to invest that amount of time just in baking the cake. Maybe someday, but not now.

Here’s what I did instead:

I used two white cake mixes and prepared each individually as directed on the box. (I only had one 8-inch pan, so I couldn’t bake them all together at the same time.)

I then divided each cake mix into 6 bowls and added gel food coloring to each – red, purple, blue, orange, yellow, green.
I’ve had much more luck with gel coloring giving me true-to-life colors than the old style liquid stuff.

I added roughly half of every color to each pan, working in opposite directions through the rainbow colors, and just plopping each color on top of the last. (In one pan I put purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red; in the other pan I worked from red to purple.)

If I’ve completely confused you, take a look at the photos and it will probably help. Clear instructions aren’t my strongest point…

For the last few colors I added just a little bit less than the others so they wouldn’t obscure the colors underneath.

I baked the cakes and then repeated the process for the second layers. After it was too late I realized I should have switched the order again in the second pans for optimal rainbow-ish results.


Remind me never to buy non-Wilton pans ever again. Check out how much nicer the Wilton-baked cake looks. Lesson learned.

Put it all together and you have a crazy rainbow cake that your four-year-old will adore!
(I know it looks kinda weird in this photo, but that’s because of all the candy and ice cream cones we had to pull out of the cake before cutting.)

It wasn’t hard at all, just a little time consuming. Well worth it, judging by my little one’s reaction.

Linking to these parties.



Tidy Mom