Rainbow Cake and International Women's Day!

Last year for St. Patrick's Day, I made rainbow cake, which everyone adored, my daughter and her friends enjoyed it very much. My daughter was asking me to make this again for this year St. Patrick's Day. I thought to make it ahead (St. Patrick's Day which falls on March 17) and for International Women's Day too. This way I will use up the cream sitting in my fridge which I got to make icecream (my icecream maker burned......). So sad ...but the idea of making this was delightful and cheered me up. Just did a simple frosting with fresh whipped cream.

Today, March 8 is International Women's Day (IWD) celebrating the achievements of women in all fields in the past, present and in future. Every year IWD has a theme, and this year's is "Inspiring Change". Right from early days, women worked very hard locally and globally  that we have come to achieve in all fields in this world now. My honors to those who worked hard for us  the past, cheers to everyone who are doing now and to those in the future. Proud to be woman, wishes to all of you out there and with my rainbow cake. Let's create rainbows in everybody's life.

I made this simple fool proof cake with condensed milk which my mom used to make when we were little (but for one slight change of adding vinegar). Anyone can follow this age old recipe and make delicious eggless cake. I did two batches and I divided each batch into three portions and colored according to rainbow colors. Once cool, stacked each layer with a little frosting and finally frosted the whole cake with the same fresh cream.

When you slice the cake, it is beautiful and colorful bringing out a WOW and you can look at these forever (if it lasts that long). A special friend had come to our home . The kids decorated the cake with m&m's each one taking turn and decorating their portions. It was a little tricky to serve the cake, they had fun when it kind of jiggled and one layer fell down from the slice. Baking, decorating and eating is supposed to be fun and hence it served the purpose. Anyway, I managed to do it better by slicing the cake right after it was taken out of the fridge. It was easier and my friend was surprised to see the colorful layers.

Look at the beautiful layer of colors! Isn't it great?

Ingredients:

Maida / APF - 21/4 cups
Butter - 1/2 cup, softened
Condensed milk - 400 g can
Milk - 1 cup
Salt - 1/4 tsp
Baking powder - 2  tsp
Baking soda - 1 tsp
Vanilla essence - 11/2 tbsp
Apple cider vinegar - 2 tbsp
Food color - rainbow colors

In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients. In another bowl, beat butter, condensed milk, milk and vanilla till fluffy. Add the dry ingredients slowly a few tbsp at a time and beat till blended well. Continue this process till all the mixture are added. Now add  vinegar and beat well. Divide into 3 portions, add violet, blue and green food color and pour into three greased bowls.

Bake at 180C for 12.30 min, until, the toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack before inverting. Repeat the same process and bake red, orange and yellow.

Stack the violet color, apply a little bit fresh cream frosting, spread and lay the blue color cake layer on top of purple. Continue doing this process till all the cake layers are arranged according to the color order in a rainbow.

Apply the frosting on the sides and top, smoothen out. Keep in fridge after crumb coating and whenever needed to enable easy frosting.

Do another layer of frosting and refrigerate until use. Delicious colorful bright rainbows are ready to sliced up and enjoyed!

Fresh cream frosting

Fresh cream or heavy cream - 3 cups
vanilla essence - 2 tsp
sugar - 8 tbsp

Beat all these together till you get stiff peaks.