Coolest Rainbow Cakes and Lots of Creative Cakes

I got the idea for this cake for my daughter’s fourth birthday from a cake book for creative cakes from the 70’s. I adapted it a little and it turned out better than I had hoped. It takes one round cake to make it and since we have a lot of family that come to birthday parties we needed it big. Luckily my mother-in-law had a huge round pan that holds two boxed cake mixes. I used one yellow and one chocolate and made a swirl cake (put one mix in the pan first and then the other on top and use a knife to swirl them together).

When the cake was cool I frosted only the top and then cut it in half and then stood the two halves up together. I cut wooden skewers and put four or five of them clear through the cake to make sure it stayed together. I put a thin coat of frosting over the whole thing to seal in the crumbs. I left it overnight and frosted it the next day.

I just used regular canned white frosting. After it was frosted I put M&M’s that I had separated to make the rainbow. I had to use Skittles for the purple though. I frosted cupcakes with white frosting to make the clouds. It was really a lot of fun to make.

More Rainbow Cakes

Cake by Leora D., Castle Rock, CO

This idea came from the M&M website for creative cakes and was pretty easy to assemble. A batch of cupcakes with plain white frosting, rows of M&M’s and marshmallow clouds. I first individually frosted each cupcake and then assembled them on a white board. There were a few spots where the gap between the cupcakes was a little large so I just stuffed a marshmallow in there and frosted over the whole thing together.

I used a regular bag of M&M’s but you could go to a candy store to get specific rainbow colors if you wanted. After having done it I would recommend starting your rainbow with your middle color to make certain it is centered and both rows of cupcakes have the same (approximate) number of rows of M&Ms on them. It is best to divide your M&M colors ahead of time and even better to have help…my icing started to harden before I finished putting M&Ms on which made it harder to get them to stick in place.

The clouds are regular large marshmallows. They are actually stacked one and a 1/2 high which put them at a good level to overlap the top of the cupcakes. Put the 1/2 marshmallow on the bottom with the inside cut half up so the top marshmallow will stick to it. Also slice a sliver off of each side to make the groupings stick together too.

Cake by Jessica S., Hudson, NY

The theme was My Little Pony for my daughter’s 4th birthday. I had some ideas for creative cakes so this is my cake. There were a lot of people so I made 1 chocolate and 1 vanilla cake. For 1 rainbow bake a 1 9″ round cake and a 1 6″ round cake. You will need icing and defrosted cool whip. Cut 1 9″ round in half (making 2 half circles). Attach with whatever filling making a half cake. Place on serving platter flat side down. Apply a crumb-coat of icing and refrigerate.

Mix up frosting colors making redder than any other color. Apply colors using Wilton #104 tip. Start with last color. (You may want to use a toothpick to trace out arch thickness to insure you’ll have enough room)

I left room on one side at base for making a pony. To make the pony I “drew” it with a toothpick and colored it with a #3 tip and the appropriate colors.

To make clouds: Cut a large notch out of small round cake to allow base of rainbow to fit in. Frost with cool whip. Add some cool whip to the other end for little cloud. Enjoy!

Cake by Maya S., Townsville, Australia

We had a rainbow party for my daughter’s 3rd birthday as she’s really into colours. I got some ideas for it from several books and websites (that were full of creative cakes!), and found a fantastic recipe for marshmallow fondant from this website… (Thanks Peggy, it’s easy to make and use and is absolutely delicious.)

I made a square chocolate cake for the base, which I iced with blue buttercream icing. The rainbow is a sponge cake made in a ring tin and cut in half, with the two halves stuck together with buttercream.

The sponge cake was done in rainbow colours by dividing up the mixture and colouring it in separate bowls. I put each colour in the cake tin separately, putting it in the oven for 5-10 minutes before adding the next colour. The different colours ended up mixing so it wasn’t quite the perfectly rainbow-striped cake I’d planned, but still looked pretty cool.

The rainbow was iced with buttercream and then I added strips/pieces of the coloured fondant to complete the rainbow. I also rolled some ‘snakes’ of fondant to shape the alphabets, and to cover up the less than neat base of the cake. I made the fondant a week before the party, and baked the 2 cakes the day before.

I should’ve really started decorating the creative cakes the day before as it took way longer than expected and I was panicking a bit on the day… I had planned to put some little white clouds on it but ran out of time. It was a huge hit, and everyone was impressed that the cake itself was rainbow coloured as well.

Creative cakes by C. Bowman, Oakhurst, CA

My daughter was really into the Care Bears for her fifth birthday, so we thought of creative cakes and together we made this rainbow cake. I wont lie, it wasn’t very easy. But it was well worth the efforts. The cake was roughly three feet long and two/three feet high.

We took three rectangular cakes, fit them together, and cut out the rainbow. Then we secured each cake to the next with frosting. Next we cut out cloud shapes from the excess cake (and there was lots of it), and secured those to the “rainbow”.

I got a big piece of cardboard to transport it on, and taped sky blue material to it. The hardest part for me was making equal sized lines for each color. I ended up using a ruler and a thin line of whatever color I was using to outline.

Red is always such a hard color to make happen, and after a disastrous Elmo cake I learned never to ice an entire cake with store bought red icing (bleh). This time around I used the gel food colorings that are found in the craft section at WalMart. Great stuff! I iced each section, but left the top and bottom white like the clouds.

Lastly, I sprinkled the whole thing with edible glitter. Our creative cakes were a huge success amongst the five year olds.

Creative cake by Bev P., Powell River, BC

For my daughter’s seventh birthday she searched for creative cakes and finally decided that she wanted a rainbow cake. So we made the cake rainbow on the outside and the inside.

First I used a white cake mix and divided the batter in to six bowls. I then tinted each bowl a different color. Then I dropped alternating batter colors into a bundt cake pan and swirled them together with a toothpick (like a marble cake).

When it was baked, I cut the cake in half and put the two flat pieces together. I then made six colors of frosting and placed them on like a rainbow. We added marshmallows at one end for the clouds and chocolate coins at the other for the pot of gold. She loved it so much she made me make it when she was eight too.

Creative cake by MaryKay C., Kiev, Ukraine

I’ve done a version of rainbow cupcakes for my children’s classes for each of the past 4 years. This year, when thinking of more ideas for creative cakes, I found some rainbow colored fruit leather at one of those mall specialty candy shops. Sure a lot easier than fashioning them yourself out of flattened Starburst candies (see last year’s version – the last picture).

I piped white dot “clouds” around the rainbows to give them more stability. I also made rainbow Jello in plastic cups. This is very easy to do, but you will need a full day or 2 half-days to let each layer set. Rainbow food is fun to make and even more fun to eat!

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