Rainbow Cake with Edible Flowers. For those who love those picture-worthy rainbow cakes but want to avoid food colouring, this delicious recipe, decorated with beautiful edible flowers, is dressed to impress.
I wanted to create a rainbow cake with natural flavours and colours rather than using food colouring. I asked the florist for a rainbow selection of edible flowers to go with the cake; I was so pleased with the beautiful selection they sent.
Serves 8-10
Prep time: 30 minutes
Baking time: 25 minutes per cake layer
Decoration time: 20 minutes
For the red layer
70 g (21/2 oz) strawberries, chopped (reserving a few chopped strawberries)
1 tablespoon water
30 g (1 oz) caster (superfine) sugar
1 teaspoon beetroot powder (beetroot juice also works well)
For the green layer
1 teaspoon matcha green tea powder
For the orange layer
Zest of 1 orange and 1 tablespoon of juice
1 carrot, cooked and puréed
For the yellow layer
Zest of 1 lemon and juice of half a lemon
For the blue layer
100 g (31/2 oz/2/3 cup) blueberries, plus 8 whole blueberries
1 tablespoon water
30 g (1 oz) caster (superfine) sugar
For the cake
220 g (73/4 oz) unsalted butter
220 g (8 oz/1 cup) caster (superfine) sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
220 g (8 oz) self-raising flour
For the frosting
400 ml (14 fl oz) thick (double/heavy) cream
100 g (31/2 oz) cream cheese
50 g (13/4 oz) icing (confectioners’) sugar
30 g unsprayed/organic edible flowers (such as borage or violas)
You will need
Five 23 cm (9 inch) round cake tins
Baking paper
5 mixing bowls
Palette knife
Prepare the flavourings
Make the fruit purées. Put the blueberries and chopped strawberries into two separate pans with the water and sugar and reduce until you get a thick liquid. Strain through a sieve into separate bowls and leave to cool.
For the cake
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F and then grease and line the cake tins.
Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add 2 of the eggs. Separate the yolks from the other 2 eggs and keep to one side, but add the whites to the mixture and continue mixing. Add the vanilla extract and then fold in the flour. Separate the mixture equally into 5 different bowls.
Add the flavourings
Add the strawberry purée and beetroot powder (which should be available to buy online or from healthfood stores) to one bowl and add the reserved chopped strawberries. Mix together.
Add the matcha green tea powder to another portion and then mix together.
Add one of the reserved egg yolks to another bowl, with the puréed carrot and grated orange zest and juice, and mix together.
Add the other reserved egg yolk to another bowl with the lemon zest and juice to make the yellow layer.
Add the blueberry purée to the final bowl of batter and add some more whole blueberries.
You should now have 5 different coloured bowls of cake batter.
Add the batter to the prepared tins and bake for about 25 minutes. To check the cakes are cooked, insert a skewer into the centre. If it comes out clean then the cake is cooked. Leave to cool while you make the frosting.
For the frosting
Whip the cream with the icing sugar in a bowl until thick, then add the cream cheese. Add more icing sugar depending on how sweet you like it.
Spread some frosting between each layer of sponge and build it up into a tall cake. I started with purple, then pink, orange, yellow and green.
Use a spatula to cover the cake with frosting, then add the flowers like colourful confetti.
This cake will keep well for 2–3 days in the fridge – remove 30 minutes before serving to come to room temperature.
This is an edited extract from Aimee’s Perfect Bakes by Aimee Twigger, available at all good book stores and online now.