Lemon Rainbow Cake

I've been planning this cake ever since I saw this fabulous rainbow cake on Whisk Kid. It was the perfect 20th birthday cake for my housemate Sarah. She's been hanging around in the wings of this blog as 'my housemate' for ages but I think it's high time she was introduced as herself. 

Sarah is my housemate who doesn't like chocolate cake (but loves anything else chocolate, including chocolate fondants and brownies). She is a big fan of Emma biscuits. Sarah could survive on cheesecake alone (it's her fork that's attacking this Raspberry and Caramel Cheesecake). She is the one who would have killed me if I didn't make profiteroles for this challenge (and may still do so if I don't make eclairs soon...).

Sarah also loves lots of bright colours and rainbows. Hence this cake. She was also the best bet for a fabulous reaction (see below)!

As I've said before, I'm not a massive fan of piles and piles of super sweet icing and really like my cakes of taste of more than sugar with a faint vanilla tinge. Whisk Kid already had some lemon in her icing but I wanted to take this further to really give the cake a good tang. So I added some rind to a different cake batter recipe and soaked the cakes in a lemon syrup. I also made a tangy cream cheese icing and used a lot less of it. 

I might have to rechristen this 'The E-number cake', as it's full of them from the food colourings. It's definitely a special occasion cake and not one I'd want to make all the time. Beating the colour into the batter took a lot of the air out of it, so the cake itself wasn't as light as I would of liked, but it still tasted and looked good. Room for improvement - but half the fun would be taken out if there wasn't!

P.S. I'm really sorry for the awfully lit photography - it was basically dark by the time we cut the cake and I didn't take proper ones before. I didn't want to not post about it so they'll have to do!

Lemon Rainbow Cake

(cake recipe adapted from BBC Good Food, rest own)

For the cake layers:

I used the same base vanilla cake recipe as I did for my Blueberry and Ginger Layer Cake in two batches of 3 eggs (scaled accordingly), then weighed the mixture out into three small bowls and then beat in the colours right at the end. I baked in two 6" tins for about 20 minutes each. Instead of the vanilla I added the rind of a lemon to each batter. 

For the lemon syrup:

juice of 2 lemons

100g caster sugar

30ml water

Heat all the ingredients together in a small saucepan until the sugar has dissolved. Adjust consistency with more water if needed. 

For the icing:

I didn't note the exact amounts down for this I'm afraid. I did two batches - one to fill and crumb coat, and then another to cover. First was a fairly classic cream cheese icing - beat butter into golden caster sugar with rind of a lemon, then beat in cream cheese - I then added the juice of about half a lemon. For the second one I just beat more cream cheese, a splash of double cream, juice of a lemon and icing sugar to taste until it held shape.