You don’t need a unicorn by your side to create the latest slice of cake magic, the rainbow iced cake! From little kids to grownups who are young at heart this vibrant cake will light up any room at a party. It looks tricky, but with a steady hand and a few piping bags this cake can be pulled off at any skill level. I’ll be making my cake full on rainbow magic style but it can easily be made up with pastels or school colors or in a monochromatic stripe. The nice part about this technique is you don’t need airbrushing equipment to create a cake with blended frosting colors.

The mechanics are the same as far as stacking and icing your cake. If you can ice a cake plain white you can pull this off too. Where the technique changes is how you apply the icing. I used one piping bag per color of rainbow stripingStarting at the bottom pipe a line all the way around your cake. Next, switch colors and repeat. Keep going until you reach the top of your cake, striping the side with each of your colors.. Try your best to make each layer the same width. For an easier time blending the sides and the top of your cake together I would recommend having your top horizontal strip color be the same and the color on top of your cake.

Once you have your sides base iced it’s time to move on to the magical step. Here is where you wave your magic cake wand and see what emerges from the controlled chaos.

I like to use a large, smooth, cake comb for my sides. It’s like a bowl scraper but stiff and has a nice crisp edge. It’s good to have a tool that is as tall as your cake since you will need to go around your dessert in one motion.Smooth the sides or your cake as you would a one color cake. Make a full rotation being careful not to move your cake comb up or down. This could smear the colors out of their layers. After 2 or so passes your frosting should be blended together in one smooth layer of icing.

Clean off the edges of your comb before you do the top of the cake. Ice the top as normal, bringing the edges in towards the middle and smoothing out the top. If your top isn’t the same color as the side you can see how this would be a tricky step. You could do a border on the edge to cover where they meet up in this case but I wanted to keep the border minimal for this design.To top off my cake I wanted rainbow dollops of frosting. This can be a little tricky but has a great effect. You already have all your colors in piping bags, you’ll just need one more piping bag. Roll your empty bag down low and use the bagged colors to fill it. Fill it in sections, piping in strips of color. Keep rolling the bag upwards and filling it in sections. Now when you give the bag a squeeze a full spectrum of color will come out all at once.
To finish your rainbow cake you can go elaborate or simple. In this example, I kept it simple with sprinkles scattered across the top. You could also go bigger with a little piles of cookie chunks and candies. To go full magical unicorn an ice cream sugar cone would make a cute horn.

Now, away you go, mystical secret frosting powers are not to be wasted! Try your hand at creating your own rainbow cake!

Amanda
Coborn’s, Inc. Pastry Arts Training Specialist

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