Multicolored Cake

One Moment One Time Photography

It took me awhile to decide what I wanted to do for Babygirl's birthday cake. I needed essentially three cakes; one for the cake smash, one for the guests at the party and one for Sophia at the party. I knew they had to be colorful and delicious. Ultimately I settled on a large cake for the smash, a mini version of that for Sophia and cupcakes for the guests. 

When we chose our photographer I noticed that many of the cakes were colored on the inside. This really spoke to my desire to have everything colorful! And it's really very easy to do. 

First you have to choose a cake. I had a hard time with this at first because I thought that I needed to find a white cake recipe, since I would be coloring it. That would have been fine, except I couldn't find one that came out tasting very good or was the light and fluffy texture that I wanted. I had made strawberry cupcakes from here with a rainbow frosting once before, and they were delicious. I decided to give it a try and it worked perfectly. The strawberries didn't affect the coloring at all. 

Simply divide your batter up into however many bowls you want depending on your colors. Add your food coloring to your batter and stir well, making sure to scrape the sides. I stuck with just three colors for the cake. For the cupcakes I wanted to do more colors and I found it easiest to divide the batter into Ziploc bags then add the food coloring.

I found that using gel food coloring produced a much brighter color, especially after baking than the liquid colors did.

Now add your batter to the pan(s). Start with a ladle full of the first color and pour it into the center of the pan. Don't worry about it completely covering the bottom, the remaining batter will help to spread it. Spoon a ladle full of your next color into the center of the first, and continue alternating colors, adding a ladle-full to the center each time. I found it created fun patterns on the top when I drizzled the colors for the last few layers rather than using the center technique. Really you can have lots of fun with this, especially if you have a little one who's able to help pour the batter. Babygirl mostly liked to stick her hands in it and tested my speed to stop her from eating it. 

With the cupcakes you are basically just layering the batter, since there isn't really much room for it to spread. Just snip a corner of your Ziploc bag and squeeze a small amount of each color into the molds until they are nearly full. 

For the frosting I used used my favorite butter cream frosting recipe from here. I love my frosting sweet, but you can use most any frosting. Just divide your frosting into three bowls and color them. Keep in mind that if you use liquid food coloring it can change the texture of your frosting slightly. I didn't have any issues with texture, but just like the cake, the colors were much more vibrant with gel food coloring. Scoop your first color of frosting into your piping bag making sure to keep it on one side. Next to it, scoop in your second color. Scoop the remaining color into the empty space, you want the frosting side by side, not stacked on top of each other for this effect. I highly recommend sticking with three or less colors if you do this method. You could also alternate stacking the frosting in the piping bag to give a more graduated look to the coloring, rather than twirled together. 

For both cakes I decided to scallop the frosting. I love the look of a scalloped cake, and it's surprisingly easy to do, even if you are using multiple colors. I found this great tutorial on how to perfectly scallop a cake. I may never frost a cake normally again! 

Ok, I probably will because even though it's a simple process, it's still hard to keep Babybear from wanting to help. 

Colored Pasta Fun

Babygirl has been sick and we've been under house arrest these past couple days waiting to hear what the diagnosis is. Leave it to her to be active, happy and playful despite being sick! Thankfully it was nothing more than the common cold, but we did have to keep ourselves entertained. 

In the past week or so Babygirl has discovered that you can put things IN containers (or mommy's mouth, or shoes...) instead of just taking them out. It's actually kind of fun to find her little hidden treasures around the house. So it seemed a perfect time to practice these skills with some pasta. And who doesn't love a little color!

So I'll admit I'm not good at planning ahead when it comes to crafts. These aren't ready to play with right away, but she loved playing with the plain noodles while I made the colored ones. She even helped a bit along the way. 

First you'll want to grab your supplies. You'll need some vinegar (I used white wine vinegar because that's just what I had on hand), plastic zip loc bags, food coloring, baking paper and dry noodles of your choice. We got a bunch of pasta when it was on sale for $1 a bag, so it's very inexpensive and that's important when you're on a budget. You can do this with all kinds of noodles. The different shapes could make for some fun necklace making and sorting activities for older kids. We had a couple containers as well as a measuring cup to use to practice pouring and picking up the noodles. I also decided to color some rice for future projects since I had all the supplies out (yay for planning ahead!)

Divide up your noodles evenly between your plastic bags. I made four colors, therefore 4 plastic bags, each with about a cup of penne pasta. 

Add about 2 tsp of vinegar and 5-10 drops of food coloring to each bag. You don't want to add too much vinegar or it gets soggy, so I suggest doing one color at first to test out the amount of vinegar. Then zip up the bags and mix it up really well to evenly distribute the color.

Babygirl loved helping me mix them up! Just be careful, that food coloring is messy! 

Once mixed, dump out the noodles onto some baking paper. You'll want a nice flat layer and to space them out some so they dry faster. These took a couple hours to dry inside, but it's pretty humid here (my Arizona peeps could set these outside for maybe 10min and they'd be good to go!). 

Repeat the process with your other colors (and watch out for little miss "I eat everything!")

 I'm lazy and cheap when it comes to crafts so I decided to color some rice since everything was out and the bags were already dirty. I used the exact same process and added about a cup of rice to the bags with more coloring. I used brown rice because that's what we have on hand and I think the colors came out pretty great. White rice probably would have resulted in even brighter colors. We will use the rice for something fun another day. 

As for the noodles, we will keep practicing picking them up and watching them fall and putting them in bowls. You can have fun sorting the different colors, threading string through them, counting with them, making noodle pictures, even cook them up and eat them...the possibilities are endless!