::one flipping big rainbow::

I got the idea for this cake off of the blog theidearoom. A really interesting and clever blog. Check it out.

BIG FAT FUN!

Making this cake was big fun. The kids loved it. The nerd Mom in me enjoyed all the math and art learning moments that this cake presented. “If we make all three cake mixes how many eggs total will we need?” “What colors do we mix together to get purple?” “What measurement do we get if we add three 1/3 cups of water together?” So the kindergartner missed the fraction questions, back off, she’s still a genius.

We took three white cake mixed and mixed them up as directed on the box. This filled my Kitchen Aid mixer up to the rim. Lily thought full speed would make “a fun mess” but I dove across the kitchen in time to stop her.

Then I scooped out about 2.5-2.75 cups per bowl. (We bought these bowls at Walmart for 75% off today, 37 cents a piece!) Emma set out one Twizler of each color to help us “get the color right”. It was a beautiful visual, so I let her. We put in about three inches of gel coloring per bowl. If we needed two colors we did 1.5 inches of each color. Since the bowls were pretty full we had to mix them very slowly and carefully. Emma was meticulous, Lily was not. But the job got done. We kept enough white mix to make four cupcakes for kid decorating. Another great Emma idea.

I have four 9 inch cake round so we did the first four colors. That amount of cake batter only fills the round about half way. I spread the batter around with a spatula to get it really flat in the pan. We did red through green first. I wish we had started with purple first since that would have had the bottom layer of the cake cooling the longest. After the first four colors were cooked we cleaned the pans and cooked the blue and purple layers.

When the purple was cool I decided to get fancy and cut off the rounded tops like I would with most cakes. BAD IDEA! The cake is so soft it just about fell apart. I didn’t do this to the other layers. I think they were just too thin to tolerate it. Maybe an overnight in the freezer would had done it, but I wasn’t in the mood to wait.

We thinly iced the layers together one by one. One of my friends made this cake and it slid apart so I cut five skewers to brace it all together. Then I iced the sides with a nice layer of icing. I just wanted this first layer to make the sides look smooth, not to be the final layer. This HUGE cake then went in the fridge over night to set up, after I removed one shelf to accommodate its height..

In the morning we put on the final layer of icing. Emma had the great idea of putting the colored twizlers around the outside. Which actually helped hide some of the imperfections. We lined the top and bottom edges with skittles. On the top we wrote “turtle pond farm” with our decorating pens that Lily talked me into buy. (Turtle Pond Farm is the name of our farm.) We could have used another tub of icing to really perfect the sides of this cake.

Through out this process we took turns checking on Max. Once we found him taping up the dinning room table. Obviously something that needed to be done. Once we found him hiding under the pillows on my bed. When I looked in the oven to check the first four he stole the purple bowl and RAN for the family room. He was totally silent about it. It was a pure miracle that I noticed the purple was gone. Emma and I ran after him and the only damage was about a quarter sized spill on the laminate floor. He was pulling out his greatest badness. Adorable.

Cost:

Three cake mixes $1.16 X 3 = $3.48

Three cans of frosting $1.26 X 3 = $3.78

Skittles $2.56

Twizlers $1.88 X 2 = $3.76

Eggs 0.12 X 9 = $1.14

Total: $14.72

Already had oil, PAM, and food coloring gel

Easy Write Icing Pens $3.82

I have become so cheap that this felt like a big splurge. We will use them on lots of other projects so I didn’t include them in the cost of this project.