My sweet baby girl LOVES to bake and design cakes and other treats. She adores making a HUGE mess playing in flour, and she recently discovered a new love of kneading fondant when we made her special football jersey football cake. She also adores rainbows so this rainbow cake project was fun for both of us. You should definitely try it with your little bakers!

A while back we made this adorable rainbow confection, inspired by one of the baking/cake design books in our home library. I thought with St. Patty’s Day coming up on Thursday that now was the time to share it. For us an non-Irish, St. Patrick’s Day is more of a fun holiday where Ronin and Ellie wear green to school and build leprechaun traps. The kids dream of finding gold at the end of a rainbow. We’ve actually seen quite a few rainbows lately with the weather we’ve been having. Yesterday we had one of our typical Pacific Northwest March wind/rain storms that also strangely came with lots of sun, and you know what happens in those conditions … power outages, ugh … but also rainbows!

How to Make a Festive Rainbow Cake

What you’ll need:

Round Cake Pan (size of choice, I used 9-inch)

Cake Mix/Recipe of Choice (we used yellow gluten free cake)

1-2 Jars of White Icing (we needed 2)

1 Bag of Mini Marshmallows

Multi-colored Candies in Rainbow Colors

Instructions:

Step 1: Bake Cake in Round Pan

In round cake pan, mix cake according to directions. Ellie wanted to add a little color to the cake so we mixed in some pink and purple icing to the cake mix.

Step 2: Make Rainbow Cake Shape

After baking according to directions, let cake cool. Then cut cake in half and turn halves on their sides shown.

Step 3: Ice Cake and Place Candies in Rainbow Pattern

Using white icing, stick the two sides of the cake together and then ice the entire cake. We first did a light crumb coat and placed in the freezer for about an hour to set. Then we fully iced the cake with more white icing using a swirling motion to make the white sides of the cake look like fluffy clouds.

Then the fun part! Place your candies in lines of rainbow colors. Ellie LOVED helping with this part. She did much of the rainbow pattern herself. This is definitely a fun cake making project to enjoy with the kids. It doesn’t have to be perfect to look cool, and the memories we made are priceless.  

Step 4: Marshmallow Clouds

The next step is to create marshmallow clouds on the ends of your rainbow cake. Using small dabs of white icing on a knife “glue” the mini marshmallows together to create little clumps that looks like clouds. This was another part that Ellie enjoyed participating in!

Step 5: ENJOY!

It’s best to finish up the cake right before your party or event or place in the freezer if doing the day before to make sure the candies stick. 

Have you ever made a rainbow cake? Do your little ones like to bake too?