America in Color

My brother sent me to the following photo blog one day to look at pictures from 1939-1943. He wrote, "lest we think the world was black and white during the depression."

America in Color

Click on the above link and then scroll down. The images are mesmerizing.

...it went over well

I know the recipients of this cake very well and was quite confident that Sara and Lisa would appreciate this rainbow of goodness as much as I already loved it. But the sounds of sheer glee that came out of our three mouths as I cut the first piece were louder and more excited than I could have ever imagined. They loved it, and that means a lot because these two are always raising the bar in their baking endeavors. (Though it is possible that my squeeling may have been the loudest. I was just so pleased with how the cake cut and kept yelling, "It's perfect! It cuts perfect" while flailing the large knife and cake server in my hand.)

It tasted pretty good too. Which was completely not the point of this cake. But a nice added bonus.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY LADIES! I am blessed beyond words to have these two favorite friends of mine as my family FOREVER.

Roy G. Biv

So a few months ago I saw this post about the rainbow cake. I emailed my mother-in-law immediately and told her I had a cake to make for Lisa and Sara's (my sister-in-laws) birthdays and have been excited to make it ever since.

I simplified quite a bit from the original rainbow cake. I used two boxes of white cake mix instead of making the cake from scratch. And then I separated the batter into six bowls, trying to make the amount in each one as even as possible.

Using Wilton's Cake Gel, I added 1/2 tsp of color to each bowl. Honest to goodness this stuff is lethal. If it touches anything it will turn that color...clothing, countertops, kitchen sinks... I took my time with this step and ended up with all the dye ending up in the bowl. I'm pretty proud of this fact. I have a very white kitchen...

Don't you spell Wallah like Viola or something? Because that's what I want to say about the bright colors below. Tada!

I didn't want each layer to bake up too thick, and dividing 2 boxes of batter into six bowls seemed to make the right thickness for each individual cake. I heavily sprayed my cake pan, lined it with waxed paper and then sprayed the pan again. I wasn't going to risk one of these suckers getting stuck in the pan. I had two cakes in the oven at a time for about 20 minutes.

They came out, I let them cool and then mixed up my super easy and delicious lemon icing. It was divine. And runny. And hard to keep on the cake, but it really was good stuff.

from my taste of home cookbook: one 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk, 3/4 cup lemonade concentrate, one 8 oz carton thawed whipped topping. Mix the milk and lemonade and gently fold in the cool whip.
I doubled the recipe, and I used my mixer. Hence the runny frosting. I knew better than to beat the fluff out of the cool whip, and I even thought, "this might not turn out so well" but I was sort of ready to be done at that point and it seemed like a risky shortcut I was willing to take.
I frosted between the layers and used three wooden skewers to hold the cake together when I was all done because this baby liked to slide around and had a serious Tower of Pisa tilt without the skewers.

I frosted the rest of the cake a day later with my friend Amanda and we very much enjoyed watching the drippy frosting melt off the cake as we quickly tried to cover all the color. Thankfully my cake stand has a one inch lip around the bottom. That lip has always bothered me before because it's so hard to frost a normal cake with that ring around the bottom, but today it was an absolute lifesaver. I just let the frosting pool.

Then I threw it in fridge for another few hours to set up and later I hit the road with this beauty to go and track down the birthday girls. Pictures of the cake cutting and the birthday girls are coming later.

(You don't want to know how tempted I was to seatbelted this baby in.)

our first day of school

Rory insisted we take a first day of school picture of me and the baby just before we left for our first night of birthing classes. I thought this was a sweet idea.

We are in a class with six other couples, and we are all having our first baby. It's a really nice group of people with everyone feeling as under prepared for this whole thing as the next person. We have a kick of a teacher who has taught this class for 20 some years, and I am hanging on her every word. There is just so much to absorb and consider.

When we walked to our car tonight I told Rory, "I got the impression in there that this is going to hurt very badly."

I've been getting more and more anxious lately about the birthing part lately and the only mantra that ever comes to my head is, "can't go over it. can't go around it. got to go through it." So, I think we'll go through with it.

layers of rainbow

Check this out. These bright, brilliant bowls of color, my friends, is cake batter. I can't wait to assemble this baby. We've got some birthdays in the family this week and I have been waiting to make this cake for months now. Today I woke up with a skip in my step knowing that the day to make this beauty had finally arrived!

More pictures tomorrow, for sure. Until then, I'd just like to thank Wilton's gel color for being so ridiculously incredible. And I'd like to thank the Lord that I didn't get any of this dye on my countertops or clothing.