Rainbow Piñata Cake Tutorial

I'm making a cake for my friend Sam has owned her own salon for 2 years. I often make cakes for Sam which is great because she gives me lee way with experimenting with cakes I want to do but don't necessarily have the time or money to do for no reason.

Here is the miniature version of the cake I have done for Sam (hers isn't quite finished!) because I knew that I wouldn't be able to get a picture myself of the finished result. 

I started by making a standard batch of batter, as I was filling two 8 inch tins and one 5 inch tin I used 

540g stork margarine

540g caster sugar

8 eggs

540g self raising flour

Vanilla extract

I separated the batter into 6 different dishes in order to colour them rainbow colours. This cake is so much easier and faster than a layered rainbow cake as you are only using 2 tins (as opposed to 2 tins 3 times! Unless you're lucky and have 6 tins!) plus no levelling is required unlike having 6 or 7 thin layers..... But even so it's still a boring job. I use sugar flair coloured gels to colour all my fondant and cake batter. 

I lined the tins and made pink/red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.  The orange and yellow were quite similar in colour which probabaly means it could have looked even better had the colours been a little more vibrant....!!! Trial and error however I suppose!

Rachel and I then spooned the coloured batter randomly into the tins to create this "patchwork" effect.... We were a little bit apprehensive about how it was going to turn out at this point!!

 

And of course she also helped me by licking the bowls clean (post production, obvs) 

I put them on the oven at around a 200/210 degree mark for 45 minutes or until they spring back when pushed. The cakes should look relatively normal "cake colour" on the outside however....

When you cut into it the colours show through brightly!!! Probabaly could have taken a little bit extra care so the colours didn't blur into one (orange and yellow were a little bit too similar)

When the cake is cooled, cut a circular hole out of the cake making sure not to go all the way to the bottom. Scoop out the cake so a hole forms, on both sides of the cake. Remember you can use the extra cake to make cakepops (see previous blog entry)

The is in order for the sweets not to stick to the inside of the cake and can effectively "fall out" when cut open.

After this add your sweets into one of the holes of your cake, I used skittles because they are the brightest :)

After this, spread jam around the hole containing the sweets, and pipe some buttercream around too to enable the two sandwiches to stick together (make sure you don't put too much on or your sweets may get sticky.)

Sandwich the cake together, and then chose your covering method. I wanted the cake to be quite plain because of the colour inside.  I chose plain vanilla buttercream but decided to use some of the crumbs off the cake scraps I had sliced off whilst levelling the cake to decorate.

Cut the cake and you're finished.... Sweets fall out and the sponge is rain bowed (this is only a mini cake so the rainbow sponge can't be seen that much but hopefully on the bigger one you can!) In Sam's cake I also added love heart sweets, mini eggs and some silver and ivory sugar balls. Definitely appropriate for all those eccentric people out there who enjoy loads of colour (eg. Evie Jackson.) 

But for now the finished version is....