Birthday Cake: Gabriella!

Gabriella is 4 years old and wanted a My Little Pony cake. Because I'm paranoid about legal matters, I'm always a little weary of making cakes with copyrighted characters, so I opted for (I know... shoot me...) a couple of mini-plastic ponies, and made the rest of the decorations in gumpaste. Gabriella doesn't like fondant, so the cake is covered in buttercream.

The little rainbow is made from rice krispie treats, covered in fondant, painted with food coloring and brushed with edible gold glitter. The camera doesn't pick up the sparkle from the glitter, but just imagine that the rainbow is all sparkly, and you get the picture.

The kids really loved the inside of the cake, which was rainbow colored as well. You can get step by step instructions on how to do that here.

How-To: Rainbow tiedye cake

The last birthday cake I made, warranted a lot of "oohs" and "aahs" from the kids as they cut into it and saw the rainbow of colors inside. I thought I'd share the step-by-step, since it's really painfully simple!

Start with your favorite cake batter, and some food coloring. I prefer gel, but liquid is fine, too. In these pictures I used strawberry cake batter, which isn't really the best choice, since it's already pink.. but it worked in the end.

Divide the batter into little bowls, and add a different color to each.

Pour one color batter into your prepared pan, covering the bottom of the pan if possible.

Continue with your next color, pour it in the center of the first color, like so:

And do that again...

And again...

You get the picture...

Honestly, that's all there is to it. Pour slowly so the colors don't mix, tap your pan on the counter a couple of times to help it settle, and all you need to do is bake the cake as you normally would.

Hopefully, it will come out something like this, and your kids will be thrilled:

Ta-daaa!