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I’ve had a hell of a time trying to get this post together, since I made this cake yesterday while the girls were in school so it would be a surprise for today. But today I’m editing pictures and every time I pull the program up, one of them has something urgent to tell me or needs to walk by and see what I’m doing. It’s maddening.

Anyway, I made this as a St. Patrick’s Day surprise for the girls. We actually don’t do much for St. Patrick’s Day but I really wanted to play with food coloring, so yesterday I got to baking.

I was originally going to do Martha Stewart’s rainbow layer cake, but I lazied out at the last minute since I’ve only got two cake pans and I’d have to wash them between bakings. I just didn’t wanna.

So I went with the much easier tie-dye affect. I made a basic white cake batter from my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and separated it out into six bowls, and each bowl got its own color.

I wanted the colors to go in rainbow order once the cake was assembled, so I worked from the “bottom” up, pouring in all the purple first, then the blue on top of that, and the green on top of that. In the second pan I did yellow first, then the orange and then the red on top.

After they were out of the oven and cooled I decided to just go with white cream cheese frosting.

I thought about coloring it too, but I want the inside to be a surprise.