Cake Challenge

So, a few weeks ago I saw the Rainbow cake on Pinterest. It looked so cool, I knew I wanted to try it for AJ's birthday. Never mind that she doesn't really like cake. I just wanted to challenge myself. So, I took this:

And by the time I was finished with it, it looked like this:

The inside looked fantastic. It was a show stopper for all the guests, which was the whole point really. The kids loved all the colors and were fighting over which "flavor" was their favorite. Apparently blue tastes much better than orange. The adults were impressed and even commented about how I got the rainbow in order. Well of course, why bother if not to get the rainbow in order?

Now for the issues:

The cake batter was really easy to make. I divided the batter by spoonfuls rather than weight since I don't have a food scale. The coloring was fun, I finally broke out my cake decorating tackle box for the first time in a while.

The first issue came when trying to get the cake out of the pans. I didn't follow the directions in that I didn't have parchment paper to line the pan, just shortening and flour. The orange came out great, the green and yellow tore when trying to get them out. Second batch, I over prepped the pans, so the blue and purple came out easy, just needed to scrape the flour paste off the bottom. The red still stuck. Oh well, that's what frosting is for.

Now on to the frosting: I tried Martha's frosting listed in the recipe, a merenge buttercream. The first batch broke. The butter turned all grainy. I think the eggs were still too warm when the butter was added. I tried a second batch. This one looked fantastic, so this is where my mother (my assistant for the day), and I, took a break for lunch.

Sidenote: We found the most amazing Greek restaurant in my town. I want to get M there, since he has actually eaten real Greek food, you know, like from Greece, so he can be a judge.

Anywho... we get back and the fantastic looking batch of frosting is now soup. ARGH! Ok. Two batches gone, 14 eggs gone. Martha is no longer my hero. Time to try something else. We go back to a regular buttercream, tried and true. It's much sweeter than I had hoped for, but it worked.

The cake looked great when we were done. We did a texture design and it looked like a fluffy snowball. Super cute. Well, Sunday, party day, was about as humid as it can get without actually raining. I check the amazing cake, and half the frosting is sliding off the side. Fantabulous! Move it to the basement, since the fridge is full of party stuff, and hope for the best. I am so thankful for the texture technique, as it's so easy to fix.

In the end, the cake was a success. Thankfully the awesomness of the cake overrode the sweetness of the frosting.