I've never done a "thin" layer cake or the super popular rainbow cake. I did a four layer cake one time with four 9" rounds versus the usual cut two 9" rounds in half. That cake was a bit on the unsteady side...
But I had an idea that needed a bright multi-colored, multi-layered cake, so I went off of the rainbow cake ideas I found online.
It was a bit of a disaster honestly. I didn't get enough batter in the first three 9" cake pans (you were supposed to divide it into six pans, but I only have four and only three will fit in the oven), so some of the layers turned out too thin - the purple one tore while getting it out of the pan. And then I was trying to save time, so I used my fourth 9" pan to get ready for round two, but when I flipped the cake out, realized I had used an 8" pan instead. Argh!
I was left with the option of trying to cut all the layers down to 8", accept I would only have four layers or bake another cake. I went with the third option as it seemed less stressful. So while four of the layers are Vanilla Buttermilk from scratch, the other four are white cake mix. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice...!
I went with cream cheese icing and made a batch and a half for this giant cake. And I had enough to crumb coat the cake, but no more. I usually don't even bother to crumb coat cake because I am that lazy of a cake decorator, but it seemed like a good idea with the super colorful layers. Also once you have a crumb coat layer on, it's much easier to straighten the cake up - look how crooked it was in picture #1!
Thankfully, Matt hadn't made it home yet, so he stopped to get me more cream cheese for the "pretty" icing layer. I say that in quotation marks because I never intended for this cake to look pretty. I wanted it to be a dull gray with darker gray accents. Unfortunately, the black icing dye I have turned the icing purple. The photo makes it look less purple than it was in real life. I ended up just giving up and using it anyhow. I was hoping it would turn more gray and less purple-y overnight. (It did!)
In googling, purple is a common problem when trying to dye icing black. Apparently, the easiest way to get black is to start with chocolate icing - which is less helpful when all you want is a light gray. But I did try the chocolate icing trick for the lettering on the top I wanted to be black.
Which worked like a champ! And my writing actually looks like an adult wrote it this time - wooo! But I should probably explain why this cake is an intentional gray / boring cake. (And since I was calling it a boring cake, I liked the rough look on the icing. Easy peasy!)
Dom is a coworker who is retiring today. He's been with the company and my present group forever and they sent out an email asking for stories to "roast" him with at a retirement party. I have only been in the group a few months, so I don't have much to help with. But just a few weeks ago, I was showing Dom and my team lead our technical work before a larger review to the partners for approval. I had several geologic cross sections showing where we would like to land our wells and as is my usual method, I colored the sand layers yellow and the shale layers gray. Of course, there is usually more shale volumetrically, so imagine a little bit of yellow and a lot of gray.
After giving me a thumbs up on the technical work, Dom pipes up and asks if I really like gray. I was a bit confused until he explained to me that "Gray is boring" and therefore my cross sections needed to be livened up a little. I conceded to his suggestion and presented cross sections the next day that would have made an unicorn wince. So I decided to "roast" him for the one thing we had joked about (I may have sent him a cartoon of an Unicorn farting a rainbow in an email asking if he liked the new sections better.) And I figured it would be best to make the cake so boring on the outside and tell the story for the rest of the group before cutting a psychedelic piece out for the "wow" factor.
But Dom's favorite cake is actually chocolate, so I made him my favorite chocolate cupcakes as well. Plus the dinosaurs - I will use this dinosaur mold to make fun dinosaurs as many times as I possible can!
In full discosure, I volunteered to bringing cake without realized there were 40 people invited. So the cupcakes were a necessary addition to not start a riot. "/
I didn't take my camera in to get a picture of the cake and by the time I did get a photo of it, it had been quite thoroughly attacked by hungry coworkers. However, photo quality aside, the cake was a huge hit! Everyone got a good laugh out of the story and the "cross-section cake" was pretty darn impressive in it's own right. Who knew harassing someone with a cake could make so many people happy? :)
As a side note to those that have seen rainbow cakes and are wondering why the blue layer is missing - blue is generally a "bad" color. It either means a water-bearing layer (not what we want!) or in our group it can mean ankerite cemented sandstones - which are also bad because they make drilling incredibly challenging. And since I wanted this cake to be a geologically "positive" cake, I nixed the blue and went with all of the colors that are our "good" zones. Except the purple - that represents the shale layer between our two productive zones. This probably makes no sense to a non-geologist, but everyone in the meeting appreciated the level of detail in the color scheme!