Feel like I should have something profound to pen down instead I’m going to kick off with a recipe for a seven-layered yoghurt and oil-based rainbow cake made by my bro and myself for my 83-year-old grandma!

So baby Brother has returned home after an 8 years exodus from Canada.. well actually he just went to college and is back for an indefinite period of time since he left! Suffice it to say the family is thrilled!

Since littles is also a foodie we decided to join our forces for good and the general betterment of humanity by making this rainbow cake… we did it… just not without a tantrum and a minor settling in meltdown between us siblings!

We started 48 hours prior to grandma’s big day. Which was more than enough time for the cake, … and it stayed well. We humans may have needed more recovery time though.

A plain oil based yoghurt sponge cake, taught by Mother dear was used.  Click here for the recipe or omit Colours from the ones below. I like this cake because it is moist from the oil and yoghurt and also has just a hint of tartness from the yoghurt. Seven layers of buttery cake just seemed too much and wouldn’t do justice to the simple buttercream frosting that we planned to dress the cake up with. It worked out to be the perfect contrast.

I recommend whipping two batches at a time and adding Colour to each cake pan. Well, two batches because that’s all that would fit in our oven…you can add more if you can fit that many 8 inch cake pans into your oven. Don’t pre-whip and leave them hanging around as they tend to lose air and not rise as much.

Six Colours were used for our rainbow cake. The yellow cake layer had no added Colour so I think the egg yolks kindly lent their hue.

Our blue and green cakes came out beautifully. Our violet was a shade muddy sadly. Because she loves soft pink we did one of that instead of the orange layer and a Reddy orange layer to TOP it off.

After baking and cooling each layer of the cake, we sliced the tops to even them out so they stack better … except for the red one which was right on TOP. This will also give you a vague idea of the Colour … or if you prefer to be surprised then nothing like cutting into it for the first time in a room full of people.

Each cake was then individually wrapped and refrigerated until a few hours before serving. At which point we put together a large quantity of buttercream frosting.

Once the buttercream frosting was ready, we proceeded to liberally apply it on the base cake … which was the blue cake … and pile each subsequent coloured layer on top of the other in the right order. Finally, we crowned it with the red layer and then applied the buttercream frosting on all sides. Once done refrigerate for an hour or two to firm up. Ours leaned

Once done, the entire sever layered cake was refrigerated for an hour or two to firm up. Ours leaned a bit. But once firmed it seemed to stay standing. Since we had a ten-year-old helper with us, our decoration of choice was rainbow coloured sprinkles on top and coloured glitter gel dripped down the side. With curly candles in the middle!

Next time – I might add some flavour to each Colour. But will all these flavours come together?

Possibilities include:

– red as raspberry

– Soft pink as rose

– Yellow as vanilla

– Green as citrus

– Purple as lavender

– Blue for blueberry

Maybe you have better ideas for the flavour combinations… I’d love to hear them.