In September every year, whenever I’m not project managing website builds I am project managing my two children's birthdays, which are just over a week apart. My favourite, but also most dreaded, part is the cakes. When they were younger they requested weirdly niche pokemon or dinosaur themed cakes but the last couple of years it has been everything rainbow. In the past I have made the actual cakes rainbow but luckily this year they wanted a single colour for the cake and rainbow icing.

Rather than one big cake they usually request cupcakes. The benefits of cupcakes are easier transport, guest feels more special having their own cake, no stressful cutting at the venue, if you mess up decorating one it’s easier to rectify. 

If you want to give them a try here’s how:

The cupcakes were made using the first BBC goodFOOD recipe I found (https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/cupcakes). The only addition to the recipe was some Wilton food colouring to make the cakes pink. 

For the icing:

I found the recipe made way too much the first time so the second time round I did ¾ of the recipe and it was just right.

Once the icing is made, separate it up evenly into bowls (you can do as many or few colours as you like). 

(Yes, it was annoying I didn’t have a blue bowl to match the blue icing). I find purple is a hard colour to get right, often going grey so I went with red, yellow, green, blue, pink.

Use gel food colouring as you only need small amounts. (I used Wilton).  I usually add with the handle of a teaspoon or a toothpick, a little goes a long way so start small and build up the colour. This is the most time consuming bit. 

Once the colours are mixed, spoon the icing into piping bags (to get it into the bags I find putting the bag over a pint glass is the easiest way). Cut the ends of the piping bags and roughly pipe a line of each colour onto a piece of clingfilm (I did a couple layers thick).    

Now roll the clingfilm so you have a thick icing sausage, twist the ends. Cut the end of the sausage and this goes inside a piping bag with your nozzle of choice (I used Wilton 1M for these ones).

I chose to stick to three icing methods

1. Classic swirl, start on the edge and swirl to the middle.

2. Little peaks (no idea of the technical term), just piping blobs that stand up straight.

3. Roses, start in the middle and swirl outwards.

These were being transported to a climbing wall so I used some cake boxes I’d bought a couple years ago from amazon to make sure they got there safely. They come flat packed so are handy to keep in the cupboard.

One of the children was allergic to eggs and gluten, I hold my hands up that is beyond my baking skills, so I bought her some allergy safe Colin the caterpillar cakes, I didn’t want them to stand out so I got some normal Colin caterpillars as well so kids could choose. The upside of this was adults got to eat cake too.

I think this method makes it so easy to create a really stunning look. As you can see our kids have certainly inherited our love of bold eye catching designs.