Rainbow Cake, Macarons & Cupcakes

I always look forward to trying a new technique. This time, I got to try the making "rainbow swirl" macarons and a different kind of rainbow cake, decorated using the "buttercream watercolour" technique. And, I got to make 4 dozen mini cupcakes too!

Rainbow buttercream cake

First up, the macarons. Ok, so the technique isn't something entirely new to me, because it involves "striping" the piping bag with food colouring before putting the macaron batter in. I've done something similar before with meringue kisses, but this is a first with macarons. 

striping the inside of the piping bag with food colouring

I prefer using food gels instead of regular watery food colouring because the colours come out more vibrant. After using a long paintbrush (one that I only use for food!) to carefully paint stripes on the inside of a piping bag, slowly spoon in the macaron batter. Try not to smoosh the bottom of the bag like I did or else the colours will run together. The first tray of macarons I piped were pretty much just blue and green because of this!

ROYGB stripes in the batter

The rest of the macaron-making process is the same as with making regular macarons. Pipe round circles onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. I prefer parchment paper to silpat or silicone mats because anything else has my macarons sticking. Let the macarons dry (in an airconditioned room, in my case) until a skin forms on top and it is dry when lightly touched. Bake in a preheated oven and watch the lovely feet form.

freshly piped colourful discs

Usually, I dye my macaron batter a shade or two darker than what I'd like the end colour to be, because the colour fades a little after baking. Not so with these rainbow swirl macarons! They stayed nice and vibrant, even after baking. 

ready to be filled

lovely feet!

These babies were filled with dark chocolate ganache, lemon meringue (lemon curd + Swiss meringue buttercream) and smoked salted caramel. Yum Yum!

lemon meringue & dark chocolate ganache filling

gooey smoked salted caramel

macaron "burgers"

random swirls of rainbow

These macarons are definitely not your regular "rainbow" macarons! I love the the random swirls of colour on the tops of each macaron, with no two being exactly the same! 

rainbow swirl macarons

The mini cupcakes are vanilla frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream & red velvet frosted with cream cheese flavoured Swiss meringue buttercream. I finally figured out that a tablespoon of batter is the perfect amount to get these little cupcakes just the right height, so that they reach the top of their lines when fully baked, but don't overflow with the batter making a "mushroom" at the top. 

vanilla mini cupcakes

red velvet mini cuppies

Oh, and I used to have that super annoying problem of the liners peeling off as the cupcake cool, especially for the vanilla cupcakes. Who knew that the solution was as easy as leaving the cupcakes to bake for an extra 2 minutes?! No more peeling liners. hooray!

mixing up the sprinkles

I used three different kinds of sprinkles to decorate these mini cuppies: white mini ball sprinkles, colorful flat confetti sprinkles, and hundreds & thousands sprinkles. I love this sprinkle mix! So colourful and random. Totally goes with the whole rainbow colour scheme. 

sprinkles up close

mini cupcake army

love the sprinkle mix

Finally, the cake. The cake is vanilla butter cake, dyed 8 rainbow colours! Wait, I know, a rainbow is only 7 colours. Most of my cakes are over a standard 4 inches high, but because the cake is a large 10" round, a 4-inch height still seemed too short! So I whipped up another batch of cake batter which translated into a couple of extra layers and a cake that stands a tall 6 inches!

6" tall tall rainbow cake!

The cake is filled and frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I did dirty iced the cake with just a white buttercream and let the cake firm up in the fridge before proceeding with the "watercolour" buttercream.

colourful buttercream stripes piped all around

Cover the top of the cake with the colour that you want it to be (red in this case). Don't worry about smoothening it out completely just yet. Then, armed with 6 rainbow colours of buttercream, pipe a couple of layers of each colour all the way around the cake using a large round nozzle starting from the bottom and working your way up. Try not to  scrape the buttercream flat with the nozzle. 

smoothing in progress

Then, with the cake sitting on a turntable, use a scraper to smooth the side of the cake, as you would with a regular buttercream cake, with one hand turning the turntable while the other hand holds the scraper flat against the side of the cake. I had to do scrape the cake three times before getting a smooth enough look that I was happy with. 

voilà! A smooth rainbow buttercream surface!

I guess it's called the "watercolour" technique because the colours end up blending together slightly during the smoothening process. The effect is much more obvious when doing an ombre cake, starting with a dark colour and ending with white. For this rainbow cake, I wanted to keep distinction between the colours as neat as possible, to get straight rainbow stripes. Not bad for my first try, eh?

buttercream rainbow frosting!

The cake is decorated simple with white fondant lettering and a hand-cut large fondant number one. With all the colours going on on this cake, Any other decorations would've been too much!

fondant lettering and a big number 1

view from the side

rainbow buttercream stripes

The birthday boy's uncle and grandparents came by to pick up the cake and transport it to the venue themselves. I always get worried when I don't do the delivery because anything can happen during transport. At least if I'm doing the delivery, I can do a patch up at the venue! 

Lots of colour on this candy table*

Well, nothing disastrous happened, but the grandpa did accidentally stick a finger on the red part of the cake while climbing out of the car. Luckily it was in the back of the cake. Haa!

yummy cake, mini cupcakes & macarons*

The birthday boy's mummy put together this colourful candy table, with the cake, rainbow swirl macarons and mini cupcakes laid on a cool multi-coloured polka dot table cloth! Simple, colourful and neat. Perfect for a little boy's first birthday. 

Happy 1st Birthday, Zashton!*

8-layer rainbow cake!*

* many thanks to the birthday boy's mummy for these pics!