AHi all, I'm new here so a big hi to everyone :-)

Im a hobby baker, only for friends and family but am always looking for new ideas. I want to make a rainbow cake but am looking for some advice. what have you used to colour your sponge with previously? I have the Wilton colours which work well with sugarpaste but will they work in a cake?? im UK based if that helps/makes any difference?

thanks in advance :-)

AHello Fraggle84, welcome from Wales! Wilton colours colour sponge very well. [IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3209352/width/200/height/400[/IMG] This was done with Wilton colours. :-)

AFab! Did you need to add much colouring to the mix to achieve a good effect?

ANot as much as I thought I would and they were dark colours. If you've coloured fondant and buttercream I would say you need more than you need for buttercream but not as much as you need for fondant. It was really easy and looked great when the cake was cut! It baked a bit darker as well, keep that in mind when you're doing it. That was good for dark colours but might not for rainbow colours. Have you seen the UK thread? I can recommend it, they're a lovely bunch. I'm quite new to CC and also a hobby baker and I'm always on there. :-)

ABrill. I will track down the UK thread and have a sneaky peek!

I find different cakes take different amounts, I use Sugarflair gel colours to colour them but I can't see why the wilton ones wouldn't work, a standard Victoria Sponge colours very easily with little colour whereas my normal 'birthday cake sponge' as my friends call it takes a lot more colour to get it a bright colour.

I normally paddle a bit of colour together with a tsp or so of cake batter to loosen the colour up and then it mixes in easier to the batch of batter.

These are an example of how bright the Victoria sponge comes up with the sugar flair colours.

AHmm, "birthday cake sponge" natt? Care to share? :-)

It's a 'genoese' as they called it in college (it isn't, it's really a reverse creaming method sponge with about 7:7:4:5 sugar:flour:fat:eggs) it's a lovely tasting sponge, moist and tasty, but it resembles the kind of 'birthday cake' sponge cake if you know what I mean.

I'm not sure that was very informative!

AYes it was informative, I might look into that, does it keep longer than Victoria sponge? I hate that it doesn't keep long, I know madiera cake keeps better but I (and my family) don't like it much.

Ye, loads longer! Like 2 weeks and its still pretty much fine! I mean nothing is as good as straight out of the oven, but after 24 hours it's the same on day 2 as it is on day 7 pretty much!

It has a tonne of glycerine in it though which is what keeps it softer for longer.

AOh I am so gonna try it! Thankyou natt.:-)

A125gm flour, 125gm sugar, 60 gm butter, 4 med eggs, pinch salt. Does that sound good natt? Also I gave my hand mixer away when I got my kitchenaid so could I mix the eggs and sugar with a bamix?