010: swirly cake

so today is my roommate's birthday (happy birthday, rachel!!), and of course i had to make her some cake, and an awesome cake at that. so then i remembered that her sister-in-law made this crazy wicked cake that she was mooning over, and i decided to give it a try. so here it is. we like to call it rachel and the amazing technicolor clown cake. have fun!




equipment:
1 mixing bowl
twice as many bowls as colors of food coloring that you have
twice as many spoons as colors of food coloring that you have


ingredients:
white cake recipe (i used a boxed cake recipe for a 9x13" pan *NOTE: for better colors in your dye, use the egg white recipe instead of the whole egg recipe, as it eliminates the yellow from the yolk that might mess up your dye colors*)
white frosting recipe (i used a pre-made store-bought white frosting)
food coloring


steps:
1.) mix cake batter according to recipe. separate equal amounts into as many bowls as food coloring colors that you have (i had 4 colors, thus i quartered the batter into 4 bowls).

2.) mix different color into each bowl.

3.) spoon batters into cake pan. i know this sounds weird, but i promise that it will stay put and you won't have colors running into each other to make a non-chocolate brown cake (unless you mix them together yourself). be sure that the batters cover the surface of the cake pan at an even level. if not, add a color (either the same or different, which creates an awesome layering effect) over the top of the bottom layer. be sure to use all of the batter.

4.) bake according to recipe instructions. LET COOL COMPLETELY (this is important).

5.) if you're so inclined, do the same thing with your frosting as you did with your cake batter. i put the same color frosting as was the color of batter underneath just by mixing the frosting together with the food coloring and basically frosting by numbers using the colored cake surface as my guide. the colors thus went all the way through the slices.




time: according to recipe
difficulty: 1 (1 being easiest, 5 being hardest). not hard at all, just a touch tedious.
rating: fun!! (no star scale this week, as the recipe belongs to a major cake/baked goods manufacturer and came out of a box)
suggestions for variation: try writing something in the batter, or making other sweet designs and shapes rather than just random swirlings.


enjoy!
-kl