DIY rainbow cake

Today’s guest, Stef from Girl. Inspired. is one of my very favorite people. Ever. And I’m so glad she’s here today- sharing an amazing rainbow cake to boot.

Hi there! It’s Stef, from Girl. Inspired. I am so excited to be a part of Color Your Summer this year. Kirstin and Delia are pros at hosting this series and I just feel so honored to play along! When I found out that I was going to get to share a rainbow inspired project, I had the perfect thing!!

A little while back, a close friend of mine called me up to ask if I wanted to help her decorate a cake for a preschool fundraising event. It just so happened that our schedules aligned perfectly and I was able to spend the day playing with icing and a fellow cake-decorating lover! Since the name of the preschool is “Rainbow School,” a rainbow theme cake was the obvious choice and since my friend, Emily, loves to do cakes over the top, she signed me up for a six-layer, I-don’t-even-know-how-many-colors rainbow decorated masterpiece. After talking through the logistics, and knowing that the preschool wanted a show cake in addition to the sheet cakes they would be serving to guests, we decided that decorating a styrofoam cake would be easiest. We wouldn’t have to figure out how to support and transport such a large cake, we could make it ahead of time, and we wouldn’t have to worry about the flavor of the icing after dumping ten gallons of food coloring into it. Styrofoam cake forms can be purchased inexpensively from cake supply stores. We used royal icing to decorate the cake – it colors well, holds its shape, and dries hard. We had sketched out the layers ahead of time and planned a color progression so that we would be able to fit all eight gazillion shades of color on the six layers. Emily had found this picture for inspiration and we got busy with making the icing and starting the piping!

We started with the top layer and iced it in white and light pinks, gradually moving into darker pinks and reds as we stacked subsequent layers. After the reds, we got into a groove, deciding that we liked a more blended look. Rather than layering each new color shade below the previous, we started blending the shades together, fading out the lighter shades and fading in the subsequent darker/changing colors.

Emily is a color-mixing pro. We’d whip up a triple or quadruple batch of icing (we had two Kitchen-Aid mixers going at the same time) and then plop icing into five or six different bowls and start adding color. About mid-day, Emily took over all the color-mixing and I did all the piping. She is so good at getting the perfect shade!!

We started at about 10 am and finished at about 6 pm, with both of us working pretty much non-stop the whole day. It was SO much fun! I loved having the opportunity to watch Emily work her magic and see this rainbow of icing come together. And it was really cool to see how our very opposite creative personalities worked together. I was like “We have to make sure all the dots are uniform and perfectly placed” and she was like “I wonder what would happen if we just added a little purple to this orange-ish color.” And it turned out more spectacular than I could have imagined!

Thank you so much for having me here today, Kirstin! I can’t wait to see all of the other beautiful colors that people are sharing!

See why Stef is one of my favorite people ever? Here are some a few more fabulous posts from Stef’s gorgeous blog- this vintage food stand tutorial, this gorgeous hot cocoa bar, this absolutely amazing petal splash dress, this doll pattern, and this tutu tablecloth (the ruffled cake tutorial is here).

And be sure to stop by Delia Creates for more rainbow-y, geometric Color Your Summer goodness!