Matthew's First Birthday Rainbow Cake

My youngest son Matthew is set to turn one at the beginning of April and we decided to celebrate his birthday early since my Grandparents are here from Canada.

When Jeffrey turned one I knew exactly what to do for his birthday cake - a dog. He loved our dogs and always had - they brought a smile to his face every time he saw them. So I made him a dog cake. Same goes for his second birthday. He loves Thomas the Tank Engine, so I made him a Thomas cake (not that it turned out very well!). But for Matthew? There is no one thing that Matthew loves more than another - he seems to love everything equally! I thought of his cheeky grin, but you can't just make a smile - it's creepy. Then I came to the idea of making him a rainbow cake. It suits his personality just perfectly. He is bright, cheerful and makes everyone smile when he gives his cheeky grin.

So to the internet I went to search for images of rainbow cake. I knew how I wanted the interior of the cake to look so I just needed some inspiration for how the cake would look on the outside. I came across a cake blog called Bird on a Cake and in particular, her Rainbow Petal Cake and decided that's what I wanted for Matthew - with the colours I wanted of course. What I liked in particular with this blog is that there was a tutorial for what I wanted to do, and that it didn't seem too difficult and would look great when done (provided I managed to not screw it up monumentally).

Away I went making the cake - I mixed the batter and separated it into six separate bowls for colouring. Once that was done, each layer had to be baked separately. While this was easy enough to do, it was certainly time consuming! Jeffrey watched and quite enjoyed tasting the cake mix (and was most upset when I told him he'd had enough) and sniffing all the good smells.

Jeffrey tasting the cake batter

Cheeky boy caught in the act!

Jeffrey smelling the cake to make sure it is good - he must be from quality control!

Finally the cake part was all done, and started to come together slowly but surely.

Then the decorating began! Note to self - when needing to concentrate, send small child elsewhere (props to my mother-in-law Carolyn for watching my kids while I did this by the way - couldn't have managed otherwise!). Despite my kiddies being looked after by their Nan while I did this, Jeffrey couldn't be discouraged from trying to get involved and the one major mistake I did make in the patterning on the side of the cake happened when I was trying to ice and keep him from tasting everything at the same time!

Encouraging a boy to stop touching

Jeffrey watching mummy concentrate

Slowly but surely I worked my way around the side of the cake, doing the different colours and spreading with my palate knife like the instructions said. I did encounter a bit of difficulty in keeping my lines straight while I did this. I think if I were to make it again I'd do this bit whilst sitting down so that I didn't have this issue. As I was icing it also became evident that I might not have enough icing to do the top of the cake in the same petal pattern as the sides.

I thought about just leaving the top of the cake white, but decided instead to create a swirly, marble type effect. I achieved this by icing the top in white, dropping food colour in a circle on the top (much like the drops on the top of the complete cake), and then smearing it down and around with a palate knife. If I'd had enough of the coloured icing I could have done it with that instead.

The end result of this cake was pretty spectacular. Everyone seemed to really love it at the party and there was certainly not much left over cake at the end!