It’s that time of year again…

Cake time!

My baby girl is turning SEVEN on Monday!

Where does the time go?

Really, where?

This year Autumn wanted a rainbow cake and since she is turning seven, I thought that a seven layer cake would be cute. Behold, the beautiful RAINBOW cake!

Last year the healthy whole wheat banana/strawberry cake did not fly with our party guests and I ended up wasting a lot of my precious cake. To avoid such a tragedy, I thought that this year I may as well make something that kids will actually eat. This cake was a lot of fun for the kids. They were so excited to see the rainbow colors when it was cut.

I decided to make a vegan white cake for the rainbow layer, made with cane sugar and white flour and a carrot cake made with whole wheat flour and pure maple syrup on top for Craig and I to have. At first I was just going to have the one layer, but wasn’t happy with how the cake looked so small. I also wasn’t too thrilled with the beads as decoration around the bottom.

I guess I am used to doing the two layers like my previous cakes, so hours before the party I decided to bake and decorate a second layer. Yeah, I am crazy like that. As if spending all of Thursday baking seven cakes wasn’t enough. After some more hours in the kitchen and possibly just a few cuss words, I finished and was pleased with the end result.

As was Autumn.

Here is a look at the whole rainbow cake making adventure and the recipes I used to make the cakes. ENJOY!

First, I made the white cake. The recipe I veganized was for a 9″ cake but I tripled it, to make sure I had enough for all seven layers. Here is the recipe for a vegan rainbow cake.

Vegan Rainbow Cake

Makes enough batter for one 8 ” seven layer rainbow cake

• 4 1/2 cups cake flour
• 2 1/4 cups cane sugar
• 1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 1/2 cups soy milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 3/4 cup sunflower oil
• 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

* When it came time to bake the cake I used the three 8″ square cake pans that I had. Four pans would be even better so that you could be baking two at a time. You could even make the cake round if you prefer.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine the flour, cane sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate, smaller mixing bowl whisk together the milk, sunflower oil, applesauce and vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Divide the cake batter equally into seven bowls, add each of the colors of the rainbow to the cake batter. Pour the red batter into a greased or non-stick 8″ cake pan. Repeat with remaining colors and bake for 6-10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. These cakes do not need much baking time because they are very small cakes, so watch carefully! Once cooked, remove from oven and allow to cool completely before removing from pan.

I used a set of 8 concentrated gel colors by Wilton for the cake and for coloring the fondant icing. This coloring doesn’t thin out the fondant.

The colored cake batter really looked like paint.

It was easy to tell who was sneaking cake batter.

Once all of the cake layers were baked, I iced them and stacked them one on top of the other. Things were getting slippery and a little scary. So I put the cake in the freezer for a while to chill and to set the icing.

Here is the recipe for the vanilla icing.

Vanilla Frosting

• 1/2 cup margarine
• 3 cups icing sugar
• 1/4 cup soy milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions

Cream the margarine. Add the icing sugar, milk and vanilla alternately until combined and smooth. You can use a mixer for this. I don’t have one so I just used a wooden spoon.

After the cake was chilled, I added more vanilla icing to cover the entire cake, then it was time to put the marshmallow fondant icing on and get ready to decorate.

I didn’t include the fondant recipe in this post. You can follow the fondant how-to in this post.

Here is the recipe for the top layer carrot cake I made. I baked this cake in two 6″ round cake pans.

Vegan Sugar-Free Carrot Cake

Makes two 6 inch cakes or one 8″ or 9″ cake

Dry

• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 cup grated carrot

Wet

• 1/3 cup sunflower oil
• 3/4 cup pure maple syrup
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/4 cup almond milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients and the grated carrot. In a separate mixing bowl whisk together the wet ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Divide the batter equally into two 6″ round cake pans and bake 25-30 minutes. Cakes are done when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

I frosted this cake with the above recipe for vanilla icing and just added 1 1/2  teaspoons of cinnamon and 1 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice.

So that is the cake! Here is how it looked when we cut it open!

To add to the rainbow themed party, I decided that I would get the girls to make rainbow necklaces.

These were made out of rice pasta that I colored red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple with food coloring.

Rainbow Pasta Necklaces

This is really a simple craft to do. You could also use penne noodle or macaroni. All you have to do is divide the pasta equally into six portions and place each portion of pasta into ziploc bags. Add food coloring and shake the bag until the coloring coats the pasta evenly. Leave the pasta in the bag to dry before using. I made mine the day before.

This was a lot of fun and something that the kids could take home from the party as a keepsake.

We also made our own decorations by painting Happy 7th Birthday Autumn in rainbow colors onto index cards and tacked them up on our bulletin board.

And that was our RAINBOW party!