Rainbow Birthday Cake #FoodPicFriday

Well it looks like it's been Rainbow week here on the blog, so I couldn't let today pass without another rainbow post. Good thing I had some photos handy of a rainbow cake I made in November for my birthday. This is a simplified rainbow cake, using only one cake mix, four layers, and one batch of Marshmallow Buttercream. For the decoration I used a 1A Wilton tip to make the top and bottom border. The "Happy Birthday" is a plastic cake topper that was originally on a Dairy Queen cake.

Rainbow Themed Party

This week I've been focused on the fun rainbow themed party my friends threw for their daughter last weekend. As you know I got to make the cake and the cupcakes, but there were lots of other fun snacks and treats that fit the rainbow theme.

Rainbow Fruit Tray

Rainbow Veggie Tray

Assorted Rainbow Treats

Rainbow Cupcakes on display

The works!

Decorations

Rainbow Stuffed Animals!

Not pictured: the hosts also fed us a meal of tri-colour (rainbow) pasta with fresh grated cheeses and flavoured olive oils and a rainbow salad that had purple cabbage, green spinach, and yellow corn. Very nice!

Homemade Cookie Cutter

I needed a number "3" cookie cutter for the rainbow cake I decorated from yesterday's post. As my entire collection of cookie cutters (as posted about here) is new (and does not contain any numbers), I decided to make my own cookie cutter using aluminum foil as I've done here and here.

I originally learned how to make the cookie cutters from this blog tutorial.

Meterials Used:
• Aluminum foil
• Printed design for cookie cutter (could also be drawn)
• Measuring tape

I needed a "3" so I printed a nice looking one that was the size I wanted.  This "3" was 4" tall and 2.75" wide.

I measured the length of the design (using a sewing tape measure) so I would know how much aluminum foil I would need. The "3" I chose measured about 17.5" long.

I took out a piece of aluminum foil that measured 35"; twice as long as my design, as the first thing you do is fold the aluminum foil in half length wise.

35 inches long

Folded in half lengthwise - now 17.5 inches long

Next, it is folded in half height-wise about 5 times, until it is about 1/2" thick.

Next, trace your long strip of folded tin foil around your cookie cutter design.

Where the ends meet up, join them together. I used a small amount of glue to fasten them.

And there you have it! You're very own homemade cookie cutter!

The finished cookie cutter was a little bigger than my printout, but that actually suited me just fine. The finished measurement was 4.75" tall by 2.75" wide.

I love making the homemade cookie cutters, because they allow me to get a very specific, large sized cookie cutter, for just the cost of aluminum foil (this one has about eleven cents worth of foil in it). They are also recyclable if there is no need to use it again. All around, pretty great. And this one helped me decorate an awesome cake!

Rainbow Cake with Lots of Sprinkles

Our friend's daughter turned three over the weekend and I got to make the cake. The party theme was rainbow, so I was very excited to contribute the rainbow cake (and cupcakes - see yesterday's post).

Last year for my birthday, I made an elaborate rainbow cake that used two cake mixes, was six layers tall, and used almost three cans of icing. It was completely over the top! My friend Amanda commented "How will you ever top this? All other cakes will pale in comparison."

Elaborate cake!

I wanted to do something a little more manageable this time around, so I made a four layer rainbow cake, using only red, yellow, green, and blue and needing only one cake mix. It also only required one batch of icing, for which I used my all-time favourite, Marshmallow Buttercream. 

I sometimes get nervous when I'm cake decorating for other people, as I mostly just wing decorating and hope it works out. My friend Betony had some great decorating ideas that were well within my range of abilities, so I didn't have to stress too much. The inspiration for this cake decoration came from this blog that was linked to on Pinterest. All I had to do was make a sprinkle number '3' for the top and sprinkle up the sides. 

4 layer rainbow cake - pre-decoration

Decorated!

How fricken' adorable is this cake? I love the use of sprinkles. It is so festive! At first the sprinkles didn't want to adhere to the sides of the cake, so I wore a food prep glove and forced fistfuls of sprinkles to stick to the sides. I had a pan under the cake to catch any falling sprinkles, which worked great for reusing them and keeping them off the floor.

Now that is a lot of sprinkles!

For the sprinkle '3', I placed a homemade cookie cutter on the top of the cake and filled it with sprinkles. I pressed the sprinkles down gently to adhere them to the frosting and then carefully removed the cookie cutter.

Homemade Cookie Cutter '3'

Sprinkle '3'

This cake was very fun to make and decorate and everyone at the party enjoyed it. Win!

Rainbow Cupcake Toppers

Our friend's daughter turned three over the weekend and she had a rainbow themed birthday party. Because my friend knows I love making rainbow baked goods, I got tapped to make the cake and some cupcakes. I was pretty excited about it and decided to make some fun cupcake toppers (I got to use my glue gun!). I'd never made them or used them before, but now I'm totally in love with them, and am obsessed with all wonderful things I am going to top my cupcakes with. Seriously, any excuse to use my glue gun!

I have a lot of scrapbooking supplies, so this craft was pretty easy to create.

First I punched some 1 1/2" stars using card stock in rainbow colours (red, yellow, green, blue). Then I punched some 1 1/4" stars in white card stock. I free hand wrote the number 3 (the birthday girl's age), in coordinating colours on the white stars.

Next I used a glue stick to stick all the numbered stars to the colourful stars.

Using regular toothpicks, I used my glue gun (so fun!) to adhere the stars to the toothpicks.

These were simple and fun to make and were a festive addition to the cupcakes.