Recipes

How to make Lola's Rainbow Cake

Taste the Rainbow with Lola's Rainbw Cake

Ever wanted to make sure your life was all sunshine and rainbows? Well, with this spectacular rainbow cake it absolutely can be! Minimalists, look away now, because this cake is a vibrant, over the top spectacular that’s perfect for every celebration - or, you know, just a super indulgent evening in!

We love making this cake for birthdays, because it’s a showstopper and it’s rainbow wow-factor deserves to be seen by as many eyes as possible! It’s totally unabashedly joyous, and we dare you to try and cut into this cake without smiling.

This cake is made of 6 layers of delicious, fluffy vanilla cake sandwiched with gorgeous buttercream icing. It’s certainly not one for those lacking a sweet tooth! It may look complicated, but it’s actually very easy to make.

Easy, but time consuming, so this is not a cake to make if you’re in a rush. We tend to make this over a weekend, so we bake all the cakes on one day, then assemble and add the icing the day after. But, if you’re keen, there really is nothing to stop you from baking, assembling, and then of course eating all in one go!

The most important thing to get right in a rainbow cake is the colours! We suggest using gel food colourings which are much more vibrant and they last in the cupboard forever. When you go to colour your batter do a drop more than you think you’ll need. The cakes lighten up in the oven so it’s better to have more colour than less!

If you want to create this cake, but with an added surprise, then why not look at the recipe for our rainbow pinata cake!

Ingredients
For the cake:
340g unsalted butter
650g sugar
8 egg yolks
580g plain flour
1 ½ tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
500ml milk
1 tbsp vanilla extract
Food colouring (optional)About 2 cups of sweets and sprinkles

For the icing:
450g unsalted butter
1 kg (😱) icing sugar
2 tbsp cream / milk
2 tsp vanilla extract

How to make your rainbow cake:
1. Get your butter out of the fridge a couple of hours before you plan to start baking to get it down to room temperature.
2. Preheat your oven to 180ºC.
3. Grease your cake tins with unsalted butter, line with greaseproof paper and then grease again.

Top Tip: You’re going to be baking 6 cakes for this recipe but you probably don’t have 6 cake tins, nor space in your oven for 6 cakes. It’s fine to do them in batches!

4. Next up, combine your dry cake ingredients - that’s the plain flour, baking powder and salt!
5. Beat together your butter and sugar until it’s nice and light and you can’t see any lumps. This should take about 5 minutes with an electric mixer.
6. Pop in your egg yolks one at a time, mixing one in thoroughly before you add the next one.
7. In a cup / jug / receptacle of your choice, combine your milk and vanilla extract.
8. Add one third the dry ingredients to the batter.
9. Add half the milk mixture to the batter.
10. Add another third of the dry ingredients.
11. Add the rest of the milk mixture.
12. Add the rest of the dry ingredients.

Top Tip: don’t get lazy here and just chuck all the ingredients in and hope for the best. Your mixture won’t rise!

13. Give the whole thing a really good mix. Stop after about 4 minutes if you’re using an electric mixer, or when your arms fall off if you’re doing it by hand.
14. Divide your batter evenly between 6 bowls.
15. Now get colouring! If you’re doing a rainbow pinata cake then you’ll need red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple bowls of batter. But you can make these cakes in absolutely any colour you like. Remember to tag Lola’s in your creations on social media so we can see what you create.
16. Once you’ve coloured your mixture, pour it into your cake tins.
17. Ready, set, bake! Get your cakes in the oven for about 15-20 minutes.
18. Once your cakes are completely cool, get your cakes out, wash up your tins then repeat steps 2, 3, 16 and 17 until you’ve baked all of your mixture.
19. Take a well deserved break. You’ve baked 6 cakes - that’s quite an achievement.
20. Now it’s time to make the icing. Get your room temperature butter into a bowl and start to beat it with your electric mixer.
21. Add in most of the icing sugar gradually and mix thoroughly until it’s all combined.
22. Now add in your cream (or milk) and your vanilla extract and mix together until your icing is nice and creamy.
23. If you think the mixture is too runny, then use the icing sugar that you haven't used to firm it up a bit.
24. So you’ve got your cakes, you’ve got your icing, now it’s time to assemble this mountain of colourful cake.
25. Start by placing your purple cake on your serving plate, icing the top of it and then placing the blue cake on top.
26. Repeat with your green, yellow, orange and red cake layers.
27. Ice the top and sides of your cake and decorate with extra sprinkles and sweets!

Top Tip: When decorating a big cake like this, it’s sometimes better to do two layers of icing. So decorate the top and sides with half the icing you have left, then do it again a couple of hours later. This will make your cake look neat and stop the cake crumbs coming through to the surface of the icing.

Want to taste the rainbow without going through the hassle of making a rainbow cake from scratch? Why not check out the Lola’s range of rainbow cakes here.