So I dropped the ball on that whole PEACH WEEK thing as promised last Monday, but I promise I’ll have those recipes up while there’s still a few more weeks to capitalize on fresh peaches. We have to pause for a moment though, because I have something so exciting to share!

Here’s my niece Charlotte’s 5th Birthday Cake! We told her she was getting a rainbow cake, so when I showed up at her party, she was a little unsure because it just looked like a plain cake. I put some jelly beans and My Little Ponies on top to distract her, and then this is what happened…

…and then this…

…SUCCESS!

It actually turned out to be pretty straightforward to execute. Using this post as inspiration, I decided to go with Smitten Kitchen’s 1-2-3-4 cake, which I’ve made many times before. That recipe makes a three-layer vanilla cake, which I figured would work out well to split into six mini layers.

In order to make sure the layers were even, I did a little bit of kitchen math. I weighed my cake batter (subtracting out the weight of the bowl) and then divided by six, and scooped that amount (it ended up being 9oz if anyone out there is going to make this) into six separate bowls. I used Americolor gels to dye the batter, which is what makes the colours so bright. Because I only have three cake pans, I baked the cakes in two phases, before cooling on racks and assembling. My cake pans are 9″ which accounts for the thin layers. For a taller cake with thicker layers, my guess is that people are using 6″ pans.

I stacked the whole thing up with my favourite vanilla buttercream (seen here), decorated with jelly beans, and here we have it! I think I was more excited than the birthday girl to see what the inside looked like when my brother cut out the first slice!

Charlotte’s Previous Birthday Cakes:

4th Birthday – Blue’s Clues

3rd Birthday – Big Greeney Blue Cake with Fondant Butterflies

2nd Birthday – Elmo!