Cake Chroma

[vakkotaur]

Almost a week ago I made a couple simple layer cakes from mixes. No big deal there, use the mix, follow the directions, and it's hard to go wrong. Somehow I started to consider the colors of the cakes and what more could be done. There is white cake (no egg yolk), yellow cake (include the egg yolk), chocolate cakes, red velvet, orange, strawberry and a good many others. I don't recall seeing any blue or green cakes, but a bit of food coloring could take care of that.

My first thought was, perhaps curiously, not a red and green thing for Christmas, but a red, yellow, and green triple layer thing inspired by the traffic light. That would need green, but either green coloring of a white cake or a bit of blue color in a yellow cake ought to take care of that. It was then that I began considering the spectrum. Could ROY G. BIV be done easily? Red velvet, Orange, Yellow, Green (coloring), Blue (coloring) and I suppose Indigo and Violet could also be done by food coloring. A bit of some flavoring might help things as well, but the flavors could so easily clash. A mint cake? Blueberry? And then there's the matter of a layer cake with many layers. Could it support itself? Could it be transported (no way Jay and I would be eating the whole thing ourselves) reasonably easily? How big a plate would be needed to deal a piece, since a piece would flop over on its side?

It was then that I went back to the red and green Christmas cake idea. And I realized there is something similar though not at all the same. It's a two-in-one cake: marble cake.

I won't be making any polychromatic cakes, at least not any time soon. I have a few (more) batches of cookies to bake for Christmas.

Comments

[ginafae.livejournal.com]

Marble cakes are fun, and just require careful pouring, *very* slight mixing of the batters. It's mostly in the pouring.

many-many layered cakes are held together and upright with the use of wooden dowel rods. Usually 1/4" or so.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

My grandmother used to make a polychromatic marble cake that we loved when I was a kid. I hadn't thought of this in years until you made this post.

It was just a chocolate and white marble cake recipe, but she would divide the white batter into three bowls and color it red, green, and yellow. Then she added different flavorings to these. Red was almond, green was mint, and yellow was lemon. The cake pans were filled by spooning the different colors in randomly, but without stirring at all. After baking, a slice would come out looking like a crazy quilt. And that's what she called it, "Crazy Quilt Cake." Fun looking and not bad to eat either.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Long ago my aunt on my father's side made a batch of zucchini bread with chocolate chips. It was very good, and if memory serves, very green. If you can make bread with zucchini, I'd think you could make cake with it.