Rainbow Layered Birthday Cake

My twin babies turned 1 year old last month.  Craziness.  

For there first birthday (which you can read more in detail about HERE), I threw them a "Brown Bear Brown Bear" themed party.  For the cake, I knew I wanted to do something awesome.  I'd seen a few rainbow layered cakes floating around Pinterest. I thought since the book has all rainbow colored animals in it and I was planning on using a bunch of rainbow colored things for the party, that this cake would be perfect!

It was a 6 layered cake, each layer a different color of the rainbow.  Here are step-by-step instructions of how I made it:

First off, let me apologize.  I cheated a bit with this cake.  I used boxed cake mix.  I had so much other stuff to do for the party, and my family was in town, it was just easier.  Sorry!  Anyway, I mixed up a batch of 2 boxed cake mixes.  I then divided all of the cake batter evenly between 6 medium sized bowls, one for each color.  I then added food coloring to each bowl, mixing until the color was pretty vibrant, as it will bake to be the same color as is mixed.  After that, I baked each layer separately (only because I had 1 pan).  

After all the layers were baked and completely cooled, I placed the bottom layer (I used purple on the bottom) on the cake stand/plate.  I then trimmed off the top of the layer, making a smooth surface, and spread a generous amount of icing on top.  I then placed the next colored caked on top, gently pressing down to stick to the icing.

I continued to trim off the tops and layer the cakes, until all layers were there.  Trim off the top layer also, so that the top of the cake is flat.

Next, I had to trim the sides of the cake, to round everything out and make it smooth.  You'll make a huge mess, and it will look like a rainbow exploded in your kitchen.

Next, I frosted the outside of the entire cake.  It is easiest to do this on a turning cake stand, so that you can just put icing on a knife, hold the knife still against the cake, and turn the stand.  It ices much smoother than moving the knife all around.

Then we rolled out the fondant (bought a box of it at Walmart), and made sure it was big enough to cover the entire cake (we actually did tape measure measuring).  Once rolled out, carefully place over cake, covering it completely.  I put a fondant ribbon on the bottom, to cover a few places where the fondant wrinkled.

I drew some of the animals from the book, and then cut out the shapes from gum paste.  Gum paste is similar to fondant, except it hardens up a bit more.  We had to work quickly so that the gum paste wouldn't harden before we stuck the shapes onto the cake.

Then comes the fun part!  I found edible cake markers at Walmart, and colored the gum-paste animals to look like those in the book.

Then I just wrote Happy Birthday, and wrote a line from the book on the ribbon around the base of the cake, and that was it!

**The very first photo and these last 4 photos were all taken by Lane, of 

www.meredithlanephotography.com