how to really taste a rainbow

Guys, I'm crazy. I decided to make a rainbow cake. But not just a six layer rainbow cake, a 19 layer rainbow cake.

It all started about a year and a half ago, when I saw this image online:

(via Darius A Monsef IV)

My dear friend Nic had an impending 28th birthday, and I thought this would be super fun to make. Turns out we didn't get around to celebrating his 28th birthday, since he was swamped in post-doctoral work and I was house hunting. But I knew I couldn't just forget about an epic rainbow cake, so I filed it away in my mental to-do list.

This year for Nic's 29th birthday, I scheduled a dinner party, invited friends, and set out to make a ginormous rainbow cake. I thought 29 layers would be fun, but decided I'd wait and see how it worked out. All the cakes I had seen had been stacked up long-ways, and I really thought it would be much more glorious to see a vertical tower of rainbow cake. I pinned the following images as inspiration:

(rough edges rainbow cake and 30th birthday rainbow cake)

(pink ombre cake and rainbow cake)

Without much planning, I started making some rainbow colored cake layers. I have three 8" cake pans, so I decided I would just make up a batch of cake batter, divvy out equal amounts of batter into smaller bowls and start mixing colors. I baked 3 layers at a time, let them cool for about 10 minutes, then transferred to a cooling rack and started again.

A few hours and a trip to the store later, I had 19 layers and guests arriving in 2 hours. I decided to stop baking and start frosting. Luckily, I had a batch of raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream in the freezer, so I only had to make two batches of lemon SMB (Sweetapolita has the best tutorial in the world!). I started stacking, and couldn't be bothered with things like stabilizing skewers - I just stacked and frosted, stacked and frosted. I had just enough frosting for all the middle layers and one coat on the exterior. So I guess I also couldn't be bothered to go to the store for more butter and eggs with friends arriving in 30 minutes...

12" tall, at least 10 pounds heavy, and topped with rainbow candles, we celebrated a dear friend in an epic, epic way:

 

*Please credit me if you share these images on the interwebs. Thanks!