Play Eat Grow: Eat: Rainbow Bundt

With St. Patrick's Day coming up, it seemed appropriate to make a treat about it.

Now it's easy to dye something green and say that "ta-da, it's for St. Patrick's Day" but I wanted to go a step further. (Wow...this is so unlike me.) So I decided that instead of the green being my inspiration, I would go with the rainbow.

And so I present to you the Rainbow Bundt!

I actually thought of this idea after seeing a Fourth of July bundt cake using red, white, and blue, and it make me think I could do it with more colors. And so I did.

I was hoping that the shape of the bundt pan would make for some rainbow shaped slices, and it kinda did. But whether it made a perfect rainbow or not, it was still pretty, and still yummy to eat.

But the process was a little painstaking. Well, not painstaking. I was able to get the cake in the oven within an hour, while wrangling a toddler who decided he wanted to feed himself yogurt while I wasn't looking. So, when I look at it that way, it must not have been that hard.

So basically you'll follow the recipe for the cake, which is a lime bundt cake by the way, but before you pour it into the bundt pan and bake, you'll have to do the following.

First, you need to portion out the batter. I decided to do six colors, ROY G. BV, leaving out the indigo. You can do less, but I'm going to share how I did mine. And here's where my inner math teacher reared her head. I weighed the batter and then calculated how much of each batter I wanted. My batter was about 1400 grams, so, with a little leeway, I divided the batter as such.

Red - 350 grams
Orange - 300 grams
Yellow - 250 grams
Green - 200 grams
Blue - 125 grams
Violet - 75 grams

No that does not add up to 1400, but I was allowing myself to not be precise but I wanted to be approximately in that area. If I were to do it again, I might make the red a little more, but it worked out fine the way it was.

My line up of six bowls. Do you see in the background? That's Sebastian feeding himself yogurt while my back was turned. Yay for messes!

Then you color it with food coloring. I used the liquid food coloring drops, but you could use the gel kinds as well. I started counting how many drops I used, but I lost count. Just make it pretty. When it bakes, the colors get more saturated, so don't despair if your red is looking more hot pink than red; it'll probably look red after baking.

And then when you are putting it into the pan you have to be careful. Putting the red in is no problem, but each color after that, you want to only put the batter in the middle of the bundt, so that you can still see the colors underneath it on the sides. I did this by just making dollops with a spoon, but you could also pipe it in if you feel so inclined.

Before you bake it, give the pan a few slight drops on the counter to even out the surface of the batter.

Then follow the rest of the instructions for making the glaze and putting it on. Then when it all done and cooled, you can taste the rainbow! And it does taste good. The crumb is tender and light, and citrus cakes are always a hit with me. It doesn't beat chocolate, but it is a close second.

And if you are feeling really into it, you can add some yellow candy melts or Skittles to be the gold at the end of the rainbow.

(Rainbow) Lime Bliss Bundt
adapted from here
{printable recipe}

Cake:
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temp
3 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
Finely grated rind of 3 limes

Glaze:
Juice of 3-4 limes
3/4 cup powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray bundt pan with Baker's joy, or butter and flour pan generously.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add the flour mixture in three parts, alternating with the milk in two parts. So flour, milk, flour, milk, flour.

Add in the lime zest.

To make the rainbow, follow the instructions above.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, mix together the ingredients for the glaze.

When the cake comes out of the oven, allow it to cool for five minutes before turning it out of the pan. Then with a wooden skewer, poke holes all over the cake. Then brush the glaze on generously until it is all used up.