Mary Sweet 16 Birthday
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Mary's Sweet 16 Birthday with a Rainbow Checkerboard Cake

A fluffy vanilla cake batter, dyed in rainbow colors, and made into a rainbow checkerboard cake!
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time1 hr 15 mins
Total Time1 hr 45 mins
Servings: 1 cake

Ingredients

For the cake: *

  • 3 1/4 cups cake flour sifted
  • 2 1/3 cups sugar
  • 5 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 6 egg whites **
  • 1 1/2 cup milk **
  • 1 Tbsp vanilla
  • 2 sticks unsalted butter cut into cubes **
  • Food coloring I use wilton gel food coloring
  • checkerboard cake pan

For the icing: *

  • 1 stick cold butter cut into cubes
  • 3 cups confectioners sugar
  • 2-3 Tbsp milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla ***
  • pinch salt

Instructions

For the cake:

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  • Grease or spray baking spray in the pans.
  • In your mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt on low speed.
  • In a separate bowl, combine the egg whites, 1/2 cup of the milk, and vanilla. Beat together with a fork to combine.
  • Add the remaining 1 cup of milk and butter to the dry ingredients and beat on low speed until combined, increasing speed to medium for 1 1/2 minutes.
  • Add the egg mixture to the mixing bowl 1/4 at a time and beat on medium speed for 20 seconds after each addition.
  • Divide the batter into 3 bowls, coloring each one a different color: red, yellow, orange. *
  • Stir to combine the color throughout the batter and pour into large ziploc bags.
  • Using the checkerboard cake insert in one of the 3 pans, fill each section with a different color batter.
  • Take out the insert, rinse, and continue with the other 2 pans so that each batter color is in each location within the pans (center, middle, outer rings).
  • Place cake pans in preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes and a toothpick comes out clean.
  • Repeat steps 2-11 for the remaining 3 cake batter colors: green, blue, and purple.  *

For the icing:

  • Beat together the butter, confectioners sugar, milk, vanilla, and salt on low speed just until combined.
  • Scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure everything gets incorporated.
  • Beat again on medium speed for 3 minutes until fluffy.
  • You want a creamy consistency that holds peaks. If the icing is too wet, add some more confectioners sugar. Conversely, if it is too dry, add a little bit more milk.
  • If desired, add food coloring of your choice.
  • Ice the cake including generous icing between each tier.
  • Decorate cake as desired. (we used sparkly candles, candy pearls, and cotton candy!)

Notes

* If you want to make a typical checkerboard cake, make only one of this recipe (both cake and icing), divide in two bowls for two colors (or add cocoa for a chocolate and vanilla version) and alternate so that one color is in the inner/outer rings of one pan and middle ring of the other. Because I made a 6-tier rainbow checkerboard cake, I made the recipe twice so I could use all the colors of the rainbow (with exception of Indigo).
** For baking purposes, it is best to have eggs, milk, and butter at room temperature.
*** You can substitute the seeds from a vanilla bean if you prefer, you will see dark flecks of the vanilla bean in the white icing.