Saturday, April 4, 2015

Rainbow Cake

The day before Easter seems like the perfect time to make a rainbow cake! (actually, Heidi had just been asking to make one forever and we finally capitulated.)


You could do this with regular white cake mix but we got Duff Goldman's tie-dye cake mix because that way we knew the food coloring colors would mix and be pretty, instead of turning muddy. 


Heidi helped. 


A lot. 


So did Ion. Super helpful. Those beaters weren't going to lick themselves. 

(please ignore the just-played-outside shirt. His only involvement in food prep was licking the beaters. No sweat or mud got in the cake.)


Separate the batter into 6 bowls and let a child help you mix your colors. If said child sneaks bites, you will be able to tell by the blue stains on her lips. 



Separating out the batter and mixing the colors was kind of more time consuming than I like food prep to be, like, ever. But the kids thought it was AWESOME and I got to sneak in a lesson about the color wheel. A delicious color wheel. 

Some lessons die hard when you're the child of an art teacher. 

By the way, using the food coloring that came in the box was the right choice. Look at how not-muddy those colors are!

Then you pour the batter into the pan in order (red first, then orange on top, then yellow on top of that, etc.).



No after-baking photos - they stuck to the pan a bit (user error - we were out of Pam and I used butter) so we ate 'em. 

DELICIOUS. This cake mix is totally worth the price. 

We'll try again in the morning and see if we can't get them to come out of the oven pretty enough to decorate.

 



Plantable Easter baskets!

You wish your husband were as creative as mine. Admit it.



Ryan came home from the store today with brightly colored flower pots and a bunch of perennials. Tomorrow we'll decorate them with pretty stickers and let the kids use them to gather eggs. Then we'll plant flowers in them. 

A much better way to honor the return of life to the earth than throwing plastic baskets into a landfill, don't you think?