Kitchen experimentation - Rainbow cake Mk I

Awhile ago, caramelbear found a recipe for rainbow cake and showed it to the rest of us. Me being the resident Remy scoffed at the fact they used cake mixes and lemonade to make the cake. Yuk. Diet cake? Cakes should be made with things like eggs and butter! They're all about celebrating the wonder of life not restriction!

Having voiced this sentiment, I was challenged by the other Orangehoodies to make my own version of the rainbow cake. I decided to use the lemon cake recipe since it's relatively easy with a nice clean flavour. Plus lemon is a fruit for people who care about things like nutrition. And so, here I present my Rainbow cake made with all the things that make life worth living!

Ingredients
250g butter (yes, one whole block!)
1 cup of caster sugar (yes, one whole cup!)
2 tsp lemon rind (fruit!)
4 eggs (protein and cholesterol!)
2 cups self raising flour (carbs!)
1tsp baking powder
2tbs lemon juice (fruit again!)
1.5 tbs poppyseeds (everyone loves opiates!)
Food colouring (mmmmm!)
2 cups of secret ingredient (my love!)

Cream the butter and sugar together

Grate the lemon rind and add that to the butter/sugar mix.
It's easier to grate and then juice the lemon

Slowly beat the eggs into the butter/sugar mixture until the mixture is nice and liquidy

Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and mix in well

Add the poppyseeds and lemon juice, then start dividing up the mixture and colouring it with food colouring (the original recipe used something called "jelly colours" which I couldn't find in the normal supermarket - might have to look for them in the specialist baking stores). Bake at 170 degrees C/338 degrees F for 45 minutes

Ice if you want, I was too lazy so I covered it in a saturated sugar syrup that will form a crust as well as soak the cake more lemon flavour. Cool in the tin (for 30 mins), then transferred it to a wire rack.

And this is how it ended up!
(note to self, put more green in next time)

I will agree with the original baker in that for this cake to work properly, you need to increase the quantities so the colours show up better, otherwise you get colour smushing which is what happened in my cake. That will mean you can either bake one MEGA cake (and change the duration it stays in the oven) or do what they did and make 2 separate cakes. Regardless of whether it was successful at doing the *rainbow* thing is debateable, but it's still delicious and I imagine, better tasting than a cake without fat or sugar!