Domestic Goddess: Rainbow cakes and one year old birthday parties.

As a faithful follower has pointed out to me, I have had a lot to blog about int he past couple of months. There was a lot of times when I wanted to blog about what was going on but I was either too busy or too tired or didn't have internet and it just didn't happen. So, I figured, why not just do it now? It is still interesting stuff even if it happened a while ago and it will give me something to write about on days that NOTHING happened (well, unless you would like to hear about how I disinfected the toilet or did 10 loads of laundry because the cat decided to pee on everything we own or how I didn't do the dishes all weekend and ended up with a whole counter of dirty dishes to wash-epic stuff, let me tell you).

So, today I will talk about Henry's FIRST birthday party and the totally awesome cake I made for him. He turned one on June 10th and took his first few steps that day too. He was SO proud of himself.

We decided that since we were so close to Maryland and all our family and friends (well, not all our friends, such is the life of an Army family) we would travel up there and have a party up there. We got lots of cute sock monkey decorations, balloons, put together a taco bar with all the fixin's and sides of rice and beans. I made my totally awesome guac that people (literally) fight over and that I had to ban my brother from touching it until the party started beause I was afraid it would all be gone before anyone arrived (yeah, it's that good).

Don't eat all the guac!

However, the cake was the special surprise of the day. From the outside it looked like a normal, everyday monkey shaped birthday cake that any 1 year old would love to dive into:

Cute, no?
But the real surprise was when I cut open the cake. I really wish I had had someone videoing everyone reactions to it because this is what they saw:

 Awesome, right? I mean, who does not want to eat a RAINBOW cake? So, the next questions was "How did you do that?" Well, it actually very simple and anyone can do it. Seriously.

You will need: 1-2 boxes of WHITE cake mix. The amount of cake mix depends on how many cakes you are making/what kind of pan, ect. Follow the instructions on the back of the box and mix up the batter. Then split the batter into 6 different bowls. You will get a little less than a cup per color. Then you will need GEL food colors. You can get these at any place that sells cake stuff like Micheal's or A.C. Moore. I recommend getting one gel of every color you will need (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). I guess you could do the whole "mixing colors together until you get orange or green or purple but really, who has time for that?. Mix a little of the right color gel into each cup of batter. It will end up looking like this:

Wesley, big brother and "Cake Boss".

Ooohh...pretty colors....

After that is done, just pour the colors into your pan, one of top of the other. Center the colors as best you can, as you pour in the next color pour it right into the middle of the previous color. Don't worry about spreading it around or anything like that. It will bake up like a rainbow on it's own. Trust me on this one. I have done this before, I am a professional. Once they are all in the pan it will look like this:

Bake as directed on the back of the box. When the cake is done (stick a tooth pick or your mom's really old Mickey Mouse cake tester in the middle and if it comes out clean it is done!). Let it cool a bit in the pan (hopefully you did not forget to coat the pan with a layer of Baker's Pan Spray or with a bit of shortening and flour. If you didn't good lick getting it out in once piece) and then turn it out on a cooling rack to cool down. It will look like this:

After the cake cools, decorate it as you see fit. If you just do a plain round or rectangular or square cake then a really simple icing to do is 1 pack of vanilla pudding and 1 8oz package of whipped topping. Mix together and decorate the cake. It's really yummy, we used it on the rainbow cupcakes we made, as seen here:

This is the first time in a really long time I have made a cake (and cupcakes!) and all of it was gone before the end of the party. I can confirm (based on information given to me by Wesley) that this cake will NOT make you poop rainbows. Just in case you were worried about that.

Finally, I will end with a picture of my brother in my grandfather's wheel chair because it is hilarious. At least it is to me.