Stained Glass Rainbow Cake

With Saint Patrick's day around the corner, my thoughts always seem to turn to rainbows.  A few years back we had a rainbow birthday party in the middle of winter, and I was able to make a very cool cake with a surprise rainbow center that the kids went gaga over.  Then two years ago, my 10 year old wanted a sleeping bag cake, and she wanted another rainbow inside.  Instead of doing the concentric circles like we did the first time, we layered in the colors quite randomly, and what we ended up with, was nothing short of the most amazing "stained glass" rainbow cake!

The Stain glass rainbow cake up close

Now isn't that pretty?  If you want to take a peek at how we did it I will give you the play by play below.  First, for a reminder, if you want to see the original rainbow cake technique, this is how it turned out.  (Note, if you want to make the larger, color patched rainbow cake pictured below, the full tutorial is here).

The original rainbow cake - using concentric circles

The technique used here was to pour 1/2 cups of cake batter in concentric circles (each pan the opposite color order as the first one) to get the above chunky rainbow look.  Here's what they looked like baking:

See how each pan we layered the colors in opposite rainbow order, so when we stacked them on top of each other later, each color would have it's own share of the color scheme.

For our new and improved attempt to make a stained glass rainbow cake, we were trying something completely new.  Luckily, it starts out pretty much the same as the original rainbow cake by separating the batter into 6 bowls, and giving each it's own color.

This is the equivalent of two boxes of cake mix, split into six bowls

We drizzled the different colored batters, and spooned in or layered in the different colors randomly as we went along.

Pan #1 of the stained glass rainbow cake - pre baked

Then we did the same thing to the next pan, trying to do different colors than we did the first time.  Almost a drizzling effect.

Pan #2 of the stained glass rainbow cake

Here they are baking, and we were just hoping and praying the colors would not blend too much during the baking time.  We were surprised when the colors held strong, even if they had been created with very thin lines.  I was impressed!  We baked these by the way for the regular recommend time on the box for two 9x13 pans, as we are making a double-layer cake.

Stained glass cake.  I have no idea why those rectangles appeared, but they are cool!

I tend to let cakes cool, remove from the pan, and let them sit in the freezer so they are easier to work with.  We stacked them on top of each other with a layer of strawberry jelly in between.

A layer of strawberry jelly between the stained glass rainbow cake

After that, I frosted them to look like a cozy sleeping bag (It was her first official sleep over, and all her friends were bringing their sleeping bags too).

It's a sleeping bag cake with a secret rainbow surprise inside!

When we finally cut it open, there were plenty of Ooo's and Ahh's to be had

Stained glass rainbow cake - a very special treat

The colors were amazing!

Stained glass rainbow cake - WOW!

Let's just say the birthday girl was pretty happy.

Why yes, there were rainbow plates too!

So if you need a fun new way to celebrate St. Patrick's day, or I have inspired you to do a future birthday theme party decorated entirely with rainbows, or if you need a cool Wizard of Oz cake, or you want to switch up the colors to your favorite team or school colors, it's all good.  Well, delicious actually.  Enjoy!

Rainbow Cake

Now that St. Patrick's day is a few days away, my thoughts turn to lucky clovers, dying random food items green, pots of gold, and rainbows.  I thought I would share about the first time I made a rainbow cake.  It was for my daughters' shared birthday party and it turned out amazing.  One was turning 5, the other was turning two.  One wanted My Little Pony, One wanted a rainbow party.  We ended up combining them into one glorious "My Little Pony rainbow party" and my most favorite part of that party was the stunning rainbow cake.

The most beautiful cake ever! The Rainbow Cake

I had seen a few versions on line (way back in 2009 - in the days before Pinterest) and I just knew I wanted to make it.  It's actually not that hard, you can make one too!

I wanted to make this a double-stacked two layer 9x13 cake.  It really looks good when you layer this cake up.  So my directions will be for two 9x13 cakes.  (Just thinking if you do want to make one box of cake in two round 9 inch pans that would probably work, it would just be a lot thinner)

You will need:

2 boxes white cake mix (follow box instructions)
food coloring or coloring gel in bright colors
raspberry or strawberry jelly for between the layers
frosting
6 small/medium bowls
Two 9x13 pans

Mix the two cake mixes together in one large bowl according to package instructions.  Pour the white batter into six equal bowls.  Sitr in the food dye into the bowls in the six rainbow colors.

Picture used from the blog Omnomicon - which is where I got the beautiful rainbow cake inspiration from

I forgot to actually take pictures of the dying the colors part.  The picture above is from Aletta and it was her stunning pictures from her blog that really made me want to make this cake.  Your bowls will big bigger than this, she was making a tiny cake.  She was also making a round cake.. and a reduced calorie cake to boot, so if you are interested in any of that, please check her and her recipe out.

Now the trick here in the first pan, is that I was making a 9x13 rectangle and not a circle, so I had to improvise a little on the color layering technique, because normally it's in a simple bulls eye pattern.  Note: In this pan I am going to do a reverse rainbow order.  In the second pan I will do the regular order.  (You will see why at the end). You want to start with two scoops of purple side by side along the bottom (it will start to spread out). The first color in the pan will need the most batter, so I suggest 2/3 of that color in the pan then about 1 scoop of each color after that.  After the purple then do two scoops of blue right on top of the first blobs, then two scoops of green, two scoops of yellow, two scoops of orange, and finally two scoops of red.  You can see your batter will start to spread out in a bulls eye pattern of concentric circles.

Pan #1 of the rainbow cake starts in reverse rainbow order: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red

For Pan #2 You do the exact same method, only you start in the correct rainbow order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and ending with purple on the top.  This time the red will have 2/3 of the red batter used, and the other colors about 1 scoop each.  You can see the pans after I put them in the oven. Each bulls eye is the opposite rainbow pattern.

Rainbow cake baking

You kind of have to eye ball everything and use up all the batter between the two cakes.  The bottom layer is the thickest and the higher up scoops will have less.  Try to make the layers even so that all the colors will be seen.  Cook the cakes according to regular box directions.

After they are cooled, turn them out on a rack to keep cooling so they don't stick to the pan.

To layer:  Place the first 9x13 cake down.  Spread a layer of jam or jelly between the layers to help stick them together (you can also use frosting between the layers).  My cake was very moist and started to crack in places.  The frosting helped hold it together.

Almost day-glo cake colors.  Where's my sunglasses?

It was almost a pity to cover this baby up with frosting, but that was going to be the big surprise for the birthday guests.  I ended up making blue frosting for "sky" and white frosting puffs for clouds.  A few tubes of gel frosting to make a rainbow for the top of the cake helped pull it together.

Rainbows and ponies, living together... mass hysteria!

Since we were sharing the party theme, a few small ponies made it on top of the cake as well.  After the big happy birthday song (we sang twice, once for the 5 year old, once for the two year old) it was time to cut the cake!

My youngest looks so little here!

Cutting the cake:  You can see now why we reversed the two layers.  The batter spreads out and the bottom color becomes very thin, and the top scoops stay wide.  By reversing the order of the two pans you get more colors showing

You should have heard the gasp when the kids saw this

So what should you serve rainbow cake with?  How about rainbow sherbert?  Perfect.

This turned out so beautiful!

I just loved how the colors turned out so vivid and the layers of both cakes worked together so you could see all the colors of the rainbow.

Gorgeous!

By the way, this works for any color combination.  Do pastel colors for Easter, shades of pink for Valentine's day, red white and blue for the 4th of July, black and orange for Halloween, even black and white for a zebra effect.  You can also do the same technique on a smaller scale for cupcakes.  I will post more of my colorful rainbow ideas we used throughout our rainbow party theme soon. Cute fruit trays, rainbow games, snacks, and crafts.  Stay tuned.

Shamrock Sun Catchers

Today is a beautiful sunny day in March, and I started thinking about our Shamrock sun catchers we did last year during a spring storm, and how we should attempt to make some more this year.  We got the idea from the blog Serving Pink Lemonade and you can find the full instructions below.  This is not only a fun, hands-on craft but it is a great way to use up all the tiny, old, or broken crayons in your collection.

Pretty shamrock sun catchers

 All you need for this project is:

Wax paper
hand held pencil/crayon sharpener
crayon shavings
iron
thin towel for pressing
shamrock pattern
sharpie/pencil
scissors
tape or string 

We had Mr. D help us "shave" the crayons.  We found all the left over broken ones, and we tried to find as many shades of green as we could, from dark, to medium, to lime.  Using a hand held pencil sharpener we made little piles of each color.

Here's our left over nubs when we were through

 After that you want a longer piece of wax paper.  Find your small fry (or other assorted willing participants) and start sprinkling the crayon shavings however you would like.  We tried to leave a little space around the edges to help seal everything together in a minute.

Take another piece of wax paper about the same size and gently lay it directly over your first piece.

It's a waxy crayon shaving sandwich.

Next comes the warm iron.  We had ours set on medium to low, you might have to play with your settings, but you do not want the iron too hot, but does need to be warm enough to melt the crayons between the layers though.  You do not want to iron directly on the wax paper, so get a thin towel or dish towel to place on top of the two layers of wax paper and press your iron on that.

Mr. D actually irons better than me, so we "elected" him for this part

Press gently and make sure you cover the whole area underneath.  When you are finished you might get a few gasps as you peel away the towel to reveal this underneath:

Oo pretty green wax smudges

Let this cool completely and then you can get your shamrock template out.  I simply googled "shamrock shapes" or "shamrock coloring pages" and a bunch popped up.  I printed up the best ones on thicker card stock, and we cut out a few different sizes, some large and a few medium ones. Then, with the same idea that you would use for sugar cookies, we arranged the templates out where the most would fit in the allowed space and traced with a sharpie.

Simply cut them out carefully after that and you can hang them by fishing line or string in any window.  We decided to hang them in our front window using regular scotch tape, which was less time consuming.

We happened to make 20 shamrocks when we realized our front window had twenty squares to fill.  How perfect is that?  They were really bright and festive and, like snowflakes, no two turned out exactly alike

 Pretty!

 
Our little kitty Haley liked them so much she sat in the window for quite awhile admiring our handy work.

kitty and clovers

And the luck of the Irish must have been with us, because no sooner had we put up the shamrocks, the sun came out behind the storm and out came a rainbow!

a happy rainbow smiling down on our Irish art

 It was a very lovely one too!

So grab a kid or a grandkid or two this weekend and have some fun making these cute little sun catchers.  By the way, you can switch up the colors and make these for any holiday.  Think pink and red hearts for Valentine's Day, pastel flowers, crosses, bunnies, and eggs for Easter, etc.  Anyway, have FUN!

Extra Lucky Four Leaf Clover Waffles

I thought I would pop in here and show you our St. Patrick's day breakfast we had this weekend.  I took my heart shaped waffle iron and dyed the batter green, then formed them in to four leaf clovers with a tasty sausage stem.  Turned out pretty cute and nummy.

lucky four leaf clover with sausage stem for St. Patrick's day

The girls seemed to like it, not to mention we served it with the "required" the green milk.

Also we had quite a lot of fun making those shamrock sun catchers I posted about in my last blog, an idea from the blog Serving Pink Lemonade. Shaving the crayons, finding different colors of green, daddy helping us with the iron part, tracing and cutting out the shamrocks.  It was a fun craft for the whole family.

We decided to tape them to our front window instead of hang them, but as luck would have it, we made 20 shamrocks only to find out our front window had spaces for 20 shamrocks. It was perfect.  Or should I say "purfect" because our kitty Haley sat on the window ledge and admired them for some of the day.  Then we got an extra beautiful surprise, as we were treated to a rainbow, (actually a double rainbow) which we thought was extra lucky on St. Patrick's day.  Does that mean there are two pots of gold?  Hooray!

St. Patrick's pancakes with (green) brown sugar applesauce

When we were kids, my mom always made a big deal about holidays.  Whatever the color theme for that particular festivity was, she would try and dye all our food that color for the day.  So for Valentine's day, everything would be pink, shades of red.  For St. Patrick's day she would dye everything green.  She'd dye the milk green, the eggs green, the potatoes green, and even the french toast green.  More than once she tried to serve us green tuna noodle casserole, which, let me just warn you is a clear test of "mind of matter" and sheer will power to eat.  One of our family favorite meals for St. Patrick's day that I have carried on to my own family, is quick, easy, and can be served for breakfast, or dinner.

St. Patrick's day pancakes, with warm brown sugar applesauce and whip cream.

Of course these are just your regular run of the mill pancakes with some green food dye added, but the topper is what makes this dish divine.  Take some homemade applesauce (store bought works too) and pour some into a small pan on the stove and warm up.  Add a dash of brown sugar and heat until the flavors blend.  You can do this anytime of year, but be sure to dye it green for St. Patrick's day.  Then, pour over warm waiting pancakes.  If you have never had apple sauce as a pancake topping, you are in for a real treat.  Think warm apple pie... it's totally to dye for (pun intended).  You can even get all extra fancy and turn the whip cream green and add green sprinkles too for that extra big "WOW" factor.  It's sure to be a new family favorite in no time, and I promise your little Leprechauns will gobble it up .

Oh and for goodness sake, don't forget to dye the milk green too.  They go together like green eggs and ham!

Shamrock Shakes

Not to be confused with my last post, shamrock shapes, we now move on to shamrock shakes.  Tis the season for the sweet green milkshakes that only come out once a year. Thick and creamy, minty and refreshing.  I always find it a cool surprise when my hubby shows up with two that he's secretly stashed in the freezer for us to share after the kids go to bed. And look how adorable they've made it now with a ruffle of whip cream and a cherry on top. A cute little tasty treat to splurge on now and again. It seems in recent years, that as we get closer to the 17th most of the McDonald's have already run out of the delectable stuff.  I found out this year they actually start selling them mid February and that is the reason they are mostly gone by the actual holiday.  You'd think they'd plan ahead for that, right?

In a round about way, I can sort of attribute shamrock shakes to making some really good friends I've had for over thirteen years now.  I believe it was summer time or late fall right before Y2K (member the panic?) when I got a wicked craving for a shamrock shake.  Of course there weren't any to be had, so I went a searching the internet (wow I can't really even say googling, this was way back in 1999) and I came across a copy cat recipe site that had a shamrock shake recipe you could make from home.  

So I cracked out the blender and tried it that weekend.  Not too bad and definitely satisfied the minty taste I had been pining for.  Oh and those friends I mentioned, well I found a group of ladies on that cooking site that ended up started their own cooking site/recipe exchange and we have been friends all these years.  We are from all over the country, and most of us have never met in person, but we have been there for the births of babies, death of loved ones, highs and lows, and all the fun stuff in between. That was on top of sharing fabulous recipes and cooking tips, and all of that thanks to a little ol' shamrock shake you say?  It's funny but completely true.  Here's a little shout out to my Zesty girls (Bee, Sammi, Joanie, Stacy, Kelly, Christie, Tammy, Michelle, and Kim)!

Well as you know, shamrock shakes can be a little pricey, and of course you want the option of having them year round if possible.  So I went a googling recently (I can say google now, since it's modern day) to try and find another copy cat recipe that we could make from home, and here is our result (sans the cherry).

Homemade shamrock shakes

The recipe was almost self explanatory, and though close, I am still on the look out for one that is thicker/closer to the original.  Am I the only one who really feels that the shamrock shake is their eggnog shake (minus the spices) with mint added.  I really think it has an underlying eggnog background flavor, anyone with me here? Defend or Discuss.  Ok so I will link to the recipe we used, with simple ingredients of milk, ice cream, mint extract and green food coloring.  My first thought is the next time we make these, to use chocolate chip mint ice cream for an extra dash of mint flavor, not to mention chocolate chunks are always a bonus.The real test will be to make these next Christmas, when I can add a dash of eggnog in there to see if my suspicions are correct.  I will keep you posted.  In the meantime, enjoy the minty goodness one refreshing sip at a time!

Shamrock Shapes

In honor of St. Patrick's day coming up in a few days, I thought I'd post some things related to this rather green celebration.  Every holiday that goes by I try to do crafts with my kids using the colors and themes of the season.  So needless to say I was pleased as punch yesterday, when my oldest, on her own, re-purposed some foam valentine stickers to make shamrock shapes to decorate some paper plates.  Yeah!  She's a mini me!  She and her sister both had fun gussying up both sides of the plates, only trouble for me now is choosing which side to proudly display on the fridge.  Here is their handy work.

three and four leaf clovers made from heart foam stickers

So that's a great thing to remember that heart shapes make great clovers when you put the tips end to end.  I have this heart shaped waffle maker that makes 5 mini hearts into a flower shape.  Now the wheels are already spinning on how they are going to get green shamrock waffles for breakfast on St. Patrick's day this Saturday.  
I was also looking around the interwebs for a few more craft ideas, and I found a few we want to try this week.  Here is the first one, found on a  blog at Silly Eagle Books using these same foam stickers to make a shamrock shaped stamp by gluing them to a recycled lid.

Heart shamrock stamper as created by Vanessa at "Silly Eagle Books"

You can dip these in paint, a stamp pad, or even color over them with markers to transfer tons of fun shamrock shapes onto paper.  Matter of fact you could use any foam shape and make some easy stampers out of them.

Another great idea for a St. Patrick's day kid's craft are these beautiful shamrock sun catchers from the blog Serving Pink Lemonade.  (Ironically, it's snowing today, in mid March, so a few pretty sun catchers in the window might just do the trick to help get our minds on spring time).

Beautiful shamrock sun catchers from Jeanine and Amy from "Serving Pink Lemonade"

You can make these beauties using wax paper, crayon shavings, and an iron. Click on the link above for full instructions.  You could really use this technique for any upcoming holiday. We for one are up to our eyeballs in half broken and paperless crayons, thanks to one, tireless 4-year-old who should be hired on full time somewhere for her love of disassembling crayons and creating confetti.  Now we can put her crazy love of shredding to good use in a lovely craft project for the whole family.


Have fun with the kids this week and get creative!  It's not easy being green... or is it?!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

So I just wanted to wish you a very Happy St. Patrick's Day. My family is of Irish descent, so I'm sure you spent it like most of us... You woke up, took a shower with your Irish Spring, dressed in shades of green, whistled an Irish tune on the way down stairs for a scrumptious bowl of Lucky Charms, frolicked around the nearest meadow in search of a four leaf clover, said "Top O' the mornin' to ya" in your best Irish accent to everyone you passed, followed a rainbow for a chance at some gold, listened to Enya, had potatoes and a delectable shamrock shake for lunch, had corn beef and cabbage for dinner, Made your way to a local Irish pub where you downed a pint of green Guinness and swapped limericks with the locals, walked drunkenly home upon which you swore you saw a leprechaun, kissed the blarney stone then dozed off in bed watching River dance.

Or you could do what my mom did and dye all of our food green for the day. Growing up we would always know it was St. Patty's Day by the menu. Often we would have green pancakes for breakfast or dinner, or green eggs, or green mash potatoes, or green mac and cheese for lunch. Even the milk was dyed green. I have happily carried this tradition on with my own little family and it's always a big hit. Anyway, just wanted to wish you a very happy St. Patrick's Day.