As most of you know I celebrated my birthday a week ago and as a treat, I brought homemade goodies into the office.... It turned out to be a wonderful day and I was very spoilt indeed, my boys bought me a Kenwood 3 in 1 mixer, liquidiser and shredder = one very happy lady..... it will certainly be put to good use...  So here are the recipes from my birthday.

Firstly I made a rainbow cake, I have never made one of these before and you can use any food colouring you like, I went for pink, blue and yellow with a vanilla section too.  You can of course, have as many layers as you'd like, I choose 4 as this is my first time.   I used the best flop-proof sponge cake recipe I gave, given to me by my Mother-in-law, it never fails.

Rainbow Cake

Ingredients

3/4 cup Sugar
3 Eggs (separated)
2 tablespoons Cornflour (heaped)
1/2 cup Water
1/2 cup Oil
1 cup Flour
3 teaspoons Baking Powder
Pinch Salt
1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC / 350ºF and grease two sandwich cake tins.
2. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder and set aside.
3. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together till creamy (goes a light yellow in colour).
4. Add the cornflour and mix well. 
5. Add the water and oil. Combined well.
6. Add the flour mixture and mix till well combined.
7. Add vanilla and mix.
8. Beat egg whites till soft peaks form.  Using a metal spoon fold egg whites into the flour mixture. 
9. Split the mixture between the two sandwich tins and bake for 20 minutes (or until cake skewer comes out clean).
10. Remove from tins and let cool completely before icing.

Tips

Try not beat the mixture once you have added the egg whites, this cake works great because it is so airy and light.  If you beat it too much, you remove the air.

 

To make the various colours, once you have add the egg whites, spilt the mixture in two bowls and add the colouring of your choice, pour into sandwich tin and bake as required.  I put a little at a time, till I got the colour I wanted. 

You can also use this recipe to make a chocolate cake, substitute the cornflour with cocoa powder and the vanilla with 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon = delicious ....

To put my cake together, I used Raspberry jam between the layers and a vanilla butter-icing for the top and sides, finishing it off with hundreds and thousands....