White Chocolate and Raspberry Rainbow Cake

We've all seen variations of the rainbow cake. Layers of gorgeous, jeweled colours smothered with fluffy frosting. They're almost too spectacular to eat. Almost. 

This is my variation on the rainbow craze, a birthday cake for my colourful, crazy friend. The sponge is raspberry flavoured and the buttercream is laced with white chocolate. Instead of several different coloured layers, I've gone for the lazy and slightly psychedelic pools within the sponge layours.  

White Chocolate and Raspberry Rainbow Cake

Ingredients

225g unsalted butter, very soft

225g caster sugar
4 large eggs
200g self-raising flour
25g cornflour 
3-4 tablespoons milk

Raspberry Extract

A variety of food colourings.

150g soft unsalted butter

1tsp vanilla extract

375g icing sugar

150g white chocolate (melted)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C / gas mark 4 and line two sandwich tins. 

Cream the butter and sugar together then add the raspberry extract. 

Add the eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of flour between each. Fold in the rest of the flour and the cornflour.

Add a little milk to loosen the mixture slightly.

Separate the mixture into as many different bowls as you have colours. Add colours! 

Spoon each colour into the sandwich tins. Feel free to create crazy patterns. I opted for one colour inside another until they formed rings.

Bake for 25 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean.

Turn them out and leave on a wire rack to cool.

Whisk the melted chocolate, vanilla extract and butter together. 

Sieve in your icing sugar gradually and whisk until you have a light and fluffy buttercream. 

Ice your cake! 

The Chocolate Covered Flapjack Cake

I love birthdays. Other people's birthdays that is and never my own. There is too much pressure surrounding your own birthday when really you'd rather be hiding in a dark cavern and praying to a God that you won't get any older. But other people's birthdays are great. As long as it's not you having to look at those never ending, accelerating numbers on the front of a hilariously offensive card. A big reason I love birthdays is because I love to spend hours choosing the perfect present for someone and anxiously watching them open it. It gives me a rush once I see their delighted face and realise that all that time and effort has paid off. It's also a great reason to bake and eat cake! 

As a relatively new recruit in my office, I hadn't yet had much of a chance to show off my skills in the kitchen. But when the boss' birthday arrived, I jumped at the chance to bake a cake for the occasion. It was unknown what his favourite flavour was and so I had decided on a safety Brooklyn Blackout chocolate cake, courtesy of my Hummingbird Bakery book. This was the plan until last week, when there was a scrum over a flapjack. Occasionally we get a visitor to our office who comes to use one of our desks and will always bring a hamper of treats for us. One of the treats this time was said flapjacks (a pack of 3). I heard a commotion coming from the kitchen to discover that one of our editors was contemplating the last flapjack, much to the boss' dismay. Suddenly it dawned on me. I had to make a flapjack cake! 

I spent a few hours googling 'flapjack cake', only to find normal trays or bars of flapjack. No cake shaped beings in sight. So I took it upon myself to create one. 

Here is my recipe for:

 Chocolate Covered Flapjack Cake

Ingredients:

450g Oats

300g butter
75g demerara sugar
6 Tbsp Golden Syrup

2 big bars of chocolate

Your favourite cake decoration

Directions:

1. Line two sandwich tins with greaseproof paper and preheat your oven to Gas Mark 4
2. In a saucepan over a low heat, place the butter, sugar and syrup. Stir until melted.
3. Take the pan off the heat and add the oats. Stir until all of the oats are covered in the mixture.
4. Distribute the mixture between your two sandwich tins and pat down with the back of a spoon.
5. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until golden and starting to crisp on the outsides.
6. Flip your flapjacks out onto a cooling rack or plates and pop in the fridge to cool.
7. Once they have cooled, melt two big bars of chocolate in your microwave, stirring every 30 seconds.
8. Spread a thin layer of chocolate over the top of one of your flapjack layers.
9. Place the other layer on the top.
10. Spread the remaining chocolate over the top and decorate in any form you see fit!
11. Place back in the fridge for the chocolate to set.
12. Make sure you take the cake out of the fridge a few hours before eating for the flapjack to soften!