Ever since I saw Farida's gorgeous and famous Zebra cake, I had wanted to try if I could make a Rainbow Cake along the same idea. And I did!! I Googled for Rainbow cake and found some cakes.The itch to bake this cake was getting too intense and I had to scratch it today. I have used Farida's recipe from here. I have made a few modifications as I did not need to use the cocoa powder.
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Makes one 9-inch (23 cm) cake
INGREDIENTS
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (8 oz / 250 g) granulated sugar ( I have used powdered sugar)
1 cup (8 fl oz / 250 ml) milk, at room temperature
1 cup (8 fl oz / 250 ml) oil (corn, vegetable or canola is fine)
2 cups (10 oz / 300 g) all-purpose flour(I added 2 tablespoons more)
1 tablespoon (equals 3 teaspoons) baking powder (if not available, substitute with 1 teaspoon baking soda)
1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence( Farida has used vanilla powder)
You’ll also need: mixing bowls, electric mixer or wire whisk, 9 inch (23 cm) non-stick round cake pan. I have used a smaller cake tin as I do not have one bigger to fit in my small oven:-(( . Of course we will need small bowls for mixing the batter with different colors and a good number of toothpicks.
1. Preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Prepare the baking tin.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs and sugar. Using a hand-held electric mixer or wire whisk beat until the mixture is creamy and light in color
3. Add milk and oil, and continue beating until well blended. I added the vanilla essence here.
4. In a separate bowl, combine and mix flour and baking powder. ( I sieved the flour and baking powder) Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and beat just until the batter is smooth and the dry ingredients are thoroughly incorporated. DO NOT OVERBEAT to prevent air pockets from forming in the batter.
The consistency of the batter: neither very thick not too loose.
5. I divided the mixture into 7 bowls with 3 tablespoons of cake batter in each bowl. I do not have all the colors of the rainbow(and nope I did not even check out how to mix colors to get the rainbow colors:-)). So i used whatever colors I had in my Wilton set. Swalpa adjust maadkoli:-)) ('Please adjust a little' in Kannada, commonly used expression in Bangalore). Of course I had some batter left over from this as I have used a smaller cake tin. I used that batter for making another cake which turned out UGLY coz the colors were too light and no, I will not put that picture here. Just wanted to figure out what would be the right amount of color I can use to get the right effect,so less color went into the Ugly cake. I now know I have to use more color to get a visible effect.
6. The most important part is assembling the cake batter in a baking pan. This is what you do. Pour one color of batter( I have pre-measured 3 tablespoons for each color) into the middle of the baking pan. Then comes the next color batter, pour it in the center on top of the previously poured batter. Keep going with the rest of the colors. IMPORTANT! Do not stop and wait until the previous batter spreads - KEEP GOING! Do not spread the batter or tilt the pan to distribute the mixture. It will spread by itself and fill the pan gradually. Continue alternating the batters until you finish them.( In this case 'or till you exhaust you pan's capacity or your colors' as applicable:-))
Oops! I did not stop to take more detailed pictures here. Please refer Farida's pictures to get a better idea.
8. Bake the cake till done (40 minutes in the original recipe).
9. I timed my cake to go into the oven after the usual scheduled load shedding time. The cake was in the oven for 10 minutes and THERE!! Unscheduled load shedding!! :-(((((Damn! Damn! Blast!!@#$. The cake went into the cooker. Thankfully it came out quite good, texture, taste and all.
My cake looked like this when it came out of the tin.
Not bad... does resemble a rainbow, some colors are missing.... And oh! the Violet at the far end... yup, there u see a small line of it. I could have put 4 tablespoons of batter for one color(too chicken to try much deviation from the original recipe) and the colors could have been placed better. Will do a better job next time!!
