Rainbow Spider cake

Charlotte "helping" me. Note the different colours on her face

It was Charlotte's birthday on New Year's eve (I'll write about that later) and she wanted a spider cake. humph. I didn't want to make her a spider cake (I have an intense fear of spiders and I have no idea why she wanted a whole cake that looked like one). I wanted to make a rainbow cake; something I have seen others do recently and wanted to give it a try. So we compromised, and I made a smaller rainbow cake with a spider on top. It looked awesome. And it tasted fabulous!

And here's how I did it. I used a basic buttercake recipe, but tripled it.

Ingredients (for one buttercake)
125 g butter (I use buttersoft)
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
vanilla
1/3 cup milk (I then often add a teeny bit more to make it moist)
1 1/2 cups self raising flour

Beat butter and sugar to a cream
Add the eggs one at a time and beat well. Add vanilla
Sift flour and add it to mixture alternately with milk

After I had made the batter, I evenly divided it into 6 portions. I then added some food dye and poured each colour into a cake tin. I only had 2 matching springform tins so it took me a few goes in the oven to bake them all. I put them in for 20 mins on 180 degrees.

I found it easier to assemble it inside the cake tin

I then sandwiched them together with buttercream icing (again triple quantities were used - one batch contains 150gm of butter creamed with 250gm icing sugar and add some vanilla) and iced all over (using my new spatula which Santa brought and made it so much easier). I covered it in sprinkles and used smarties to put a border on it.

All layered, now time to add the icing

To make the spider I just put one batch of the batter into a cupcake mould and baked for 15 minutes. Charlotte wanted a pink spider so I iced it using a thin, squiggly piping nozzle (sorry, don't know it's real name). Then gingerly put it on top. The legs I piped on using a ready made chocolate fudge piping tube I had spare in the fridge and used smarties for the eyes.

The finished cake

 I have to admit, this was time consuming yet relatively easy. And the payoff is huge. Everyone loved it, especially when I cut into it for the first time and revealed all the colours. I was too lazy to do 7 colours as that would have meant another batch of batter but I think it still works. (and yes, I know the colours are slightly out of order, shhh don't tell anyone. That is one of those "doh" moments, so I do recommend maybe writing down the order of colours ready for assembly). I think it was a very fitting way to celebrate my baby turning 3!

The big reveal!