Awesomely Easy Rainbow Cake!

Today one of my friends shared a post featuring some perfectly adorable teeny tiny rainbow cakes. Which reminded me of this post about making Sprout's birthday cake, that I had forgotten all about and left languishing in draft for over 2 years! My rainbow cake was neither perfect nor teeny tiny, but it was bright!

This rainbow cake was made by layering batter ...  6 different colours of batter.

I divided one plain white batter into 6 bowls and added a whole lot of food colouring!  The batter layering method I used doesn't produce evenly striped layers, rather, each colour, poured into the center of the pan, pushes some of the last colour out a little, making sort of arched layers. I alternated the order of the colours for the 2nd layer of the cake, just because :)

Note the tube of cherry cola lip smacker on the counter - totally needed for all the lip licking I was doing in anticipation of tasting my delicious creation!

Once the cakes had baked & cooled, I flipped one upside down on to a foil-covered cake plate, spread a layer of white frosting on it's flat bottom-become-top, and placed the other cake right side up atop it:

Oops, some of the top of the cake stayed stuck to the plate I'd flipped it out of the pan on to - no worries, frosting would cover that ... and it turned out to be a good thing that happened anyways! (Read on to find out why.) 

The plan was to cover the whole cake in fluffy white frosting, so when we cut into it, the colourful rainbow cake would be a surprise - a rainbow in a cloud! But oops again, I hadn't made enough frosting:

That turned out not to matter though, because before I made more, Sailor Boy & I tasted the bit of cake that had stuck to the plate, and YUCK! It did not taste good at all, it tasted BAD! Something had gone off :(

It was a rainbow cake wreck.

So sad. All that cherry cola flavoured lip licking for naught :(

I sniffed both the oil and the food colouring and neither smelled very good to me, so who knows... And since we couldn't serve it to the sproutlets and party guests, there was no sense in continuing with the frosting - but before we tossed it, I did cut into it to see how the rainbow layers came out...

And ooooh, it looked awesome! 

Fortunately, since the party was not until the next day, I had time to get more ingredients and bake another cake. The 2nd attempt, made with a fresh bottle of oil and new gel food colouring, was delicious. I was in a hurry by then since it was late at night, so didn't bother with pics, but a small sample taken before it was frosted did taste good, and the birthday partiers loved it! It looked pretty much just like the inedible attempt anyways, so here's that pic again :)

Awesomely Easy Rainbow Cake:

1. Make up a batch of light coloured cake batter.
2. Evenly divide the batter into 6 (or 7) bowls.
3. Colour the batters red, orange, yellow, green, blue & purple (or indigo & violet if you do all 7). Liquid gels works best for vivid colours.
4. If you want your stripes to be in correct rainbow order, begin with the red batter. Pour all the batter into the center of a round cake pan.
5. Repeat with each colour in order, pouring directly on top of the the last colour, in the center of the pan. 
6. Bake as directed for your batter of choice, cool, invert, & frost! 

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Pickle's Minion Birthday Bento & Party

My little Pickle is 10! He asked for a Despicable Me Minions pool party. Having had Mia Bella's birthday party at the community pool just a few months ago, I knew we couldn't really decorate, and the kids would want to spend the whole time in the pool so no snacks or games were needed. I got blue & yellow balloons & Minion partyware & favours from Whidbey Party Store, a Minion cake & a big jug of lemonade. Pool parties are easy peasy lemon squeezy :)

We had the party the day before his birthday, so I recycled one of the cake toppers in his school lunch the next day.

I was in a total rush (what else is new) so was super thankful for my Lunch Punch birthday cake sandwich cutter! I did take a few seconds to sprinkle some yellow & blue sanding sugar on his yogurt. And tucked under the oatmeal cookie is a pouch of Minion gummy fruits snacks left over from the goody bag treats. The goody bags also held a Minion bubble soap, Minion bouncy ball, mini Play-Doh, lollipop, & Minion tattoos.

   

In the tiny party room the Minion tablecloth, partyware, & balloons were all that was needed - because bonus, the pool was already all blue & yellow :)

I didn't even notice until after the fact that the Minion cake had a swimming theme too! I honestly didn't look closely at the design in the bakery catalog, it was the only Minion cake so that was it:

Pickle noticed though, and he loved it. His favourite thing to do in the pool was float & paddle around in an inner tube :)

That's Beanstalk peeking out of the other inner tube above, and below, Sprout floats past Pickle and his pals.  Everybody had a great time!

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Click a pic to buy some of the Minion partyware & stuff that we used:

Regular Show Benson Bento!

My 12 year old, Beanstalk, loves Cartoon Network's Regular Show, so when my fellow bento lunch maker & friend Lauri suggested making Regular Show bentos for the birthday of her friend who voices Rigby the Raccoon on the show, I immediately thought of my gumball machine Lunch Punch sandwich cutter to make Benson, the Park Manager :)

Benson is a peanut butter sandwich, with details made of cherry fruit leather, mozzarella string cheese, & sugar sprinkles. His name is spelled with alphabet bento picks stuck in the remainder of the mozzarella cheese stick I used for his details. On the side is a checkered Granny Smith apple and some seedless red grapes - which kind of look like Benson's gumballs, I think! 

Happy Birthday William Salyers, voice of Rigby!

Benson says you'd better enjoy this bento, or you're fired!

Linked to:

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Stuff used to make this lunch:

Bent On Better Lunches Big Birthday Giveaway!

It's my little lunch blog's birthday! My 2nd blogiversary :)

And, I have gifts! Not to keep, to give away! Hooray!

• From EasyLunchboxes, a set of EasyLunchboxes containers in your choice of Classic or Brights & a cooler bag too!
  I ♥ our EasyLunchboxes: A Rainbow of Lunch Possibilities  
• From BentoUSA, a $25 gift voucher to pick out the bento accessories of your choice! ♥ You could get everything I used in this lunch that isn't included in this Giveaway, and more!
• From The Lunch Punch, makers of my favourite sandwich cutters, the Sweet Set, which includes the birthday cake I used today, plus a cupcake, bubblegum machine, & ice cream cones!
• And, in case you could use a little help deciding what to make for lunch, from MOMables, a 3 month MOMables menu subscription PLUS a $25 Amazon.com gift card to buy lunch gear!
  Go Back to School with MOMables!

Pretty much everything you need to pack lunch, except food!

Thank you EasyLunchboxes, BentoUSA, Lunch Punch, & MOMables!

You've been a big part of Bent On Better Lunches since it's beginning and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to share your awesomeness :)

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To enter, simply leave me a blog comment. Say anything! 

Then check it off in the Rafflecopter widget below. Like the giveaway sponsors for bonus entries, & tweet daily for even more chances :)

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Pin this image for a bonus entry!

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Lunch is an almond butter on honey wheat birthday cake sandwich with sugar sprinkles, carrot sticks, strawberries, raspberries, & grapes.

Stuff used to make  this lunch:

 

Giveaway open to residents of Canada & USA only. One entrant per household please. Thank you!

Happy Peanut Butter Day!

Today is a special day in our family! I bet you're thinking it's because it's National Peanut Butter Day, aren't you? Well, we do love peanut butter, especially Pickle... but no, actually, it's Sailor Boy's birthday!

And since it is also National Peanut Butter Day, and he can't be here to eat it, I made him a birthday cake Pickle could eat for him... a peanut butter sandwich layer "cake" with chocolate peanut butter "frosting":

Happy Birthday Sweetie ♥  

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This isn't the first peanut butter sandwich birthday cake I've made.

Last year I made this one for Pickle, decorated with alphabet picks:

And I've made a bunch with this Lunch Punch:

Every day is Peanut Butter Day at our house! In case you missed my 101 Peanut Butter Sandwiches challenge, you can see them all here :)

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Did you make something nutty for peanut butter day?

Birthday Bento for Bella!

My Bella turned 10 today! Last night I baked & decorated "tie-dye" cupcakes for her to share with her class today, and completely forgot to think about her lunch!  Lunch Punch Birthday Cake sandwich cutter to the rescue! That and a bunch of colourful silicone cups made it look like a party in her lunchbox :)

Bella's birthday PlanetBox bento lunch contains:

• mozzarella cheese bites with musical note picks
• cucumber wedges - both in cake / pie slice cups
• a birthday cake turkey & cheese sandwich
• an unfrosted cupcake
• berry rice cakes
• baby carrots
• apple wedges in a butterfly cup
• a little container of caramel dip for the apples

Not too shabby for being packed in a rush... and she loved it ♥

Tie-dye cupcakes are what I called this attempt to salvage a frosting mishap that left me with not enough of any one colour to decorate all the cupcakes... Bonus, the swirling hid my lack of frosting skills!

And I'm told they were a hit with her classmates :) 

Happy Birthday Mia Bella!

In this lunch: