If you have a cheerful occasion coming up to celebrate, look no further than this rainbow swirl cake with food coloring to get the party started! This beautiful cake includes different colors on the inside thanks to vanilla cake batter with regular food coloring for a marble effect. There are different methods out there for making a rainbow cake batter type of cake. However, this recipe we are sharing today is the easiest one we have ever used!
What Kind of Occasions Might I Use a Rainbow Swirl Cake with Food Coloring?
The colored cake batter makes this cake a perfect birthday cake, rainbow party cake, Easter cake, etc. For your next party, since you can customize the color combinations, you can go with vibrant colors or go with a pastel colored cake. You could even stick with red, white, and blue for a patriotic cake. For a birthday, you can come up with your own original birthday cake coloring to match a theme that has been selected.
More Ideas for a Rainbow Inside Cake Like this
- Easter Cake – with pastel colors
- General Birthday Cake (no set theme) – with bright colors
- Rainbow party – with rainbow colors
- Unicorn party – with blues, pinks, and purples
- Mermaid party – with blues and greens
- Patriotic cake – with red, white, and blue
- Halloween cake – with black and orange
- Christmas cake – with red, white, and green
- Valentine’s Day cake – with reds and pinks
- St. Patrick’s Day cake – various greens
- Sports team cake – with the colors of the celebrated team
I’m sure there are plenty of others themes in which you can incorporate this delicious cake with food coloring. If you think of any, drop your ideas in the comments section!
How to Make Rainbow Cake Base
To make rainbow cake, you will simply start with a box cake base. Using the basic box cake mix dry ingredients along with the required vegetable oil and eggs. Use room temperature eggs for best results. Using a stand mixer with an electric whisk or a hand mixer and a large mixing bowl, you will mix your ingredients (starting at low speed and then working up to medium speed. You never want to over mix cake batter.
For this particular cake mix, you could use white cake mix. But our preferred cake mix for delicious rainbow swirl cakes is Betty Crocker French Vanilla cake mix.
But What if You Want to Elevate the Standard Cake Mix Base?
If you would like to amp up your standard box mix cake batter, all you need is a few adjustments. You need to add one extra egg and a little bit of sour cream OR one extra egg and a small box of instant vanilla pudding mix. This will help increase a richness of flavor and moistness to your rainbow cake batter. You can also add a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Of course, these additions are optional and you certainly don’t have to use them. However, once you start adding some of these changes to your box cake batter, it’s hard to go back to not doing it!
In the recipe card below, you will see we have included an extra egg and a 3.4 ounce box of vanilla instant pudding. You can omit the pudding if you do not have it on hand. And you can use just three eggs if you like.
How to Get the Beautiful Pattern Inside the Rainbow Swirl Cake with Food Coloring
What you will have so far will simply be a vanilla cake batter. At this point, you need to start preparing the rainbow colors. Set out separate bowls for as many colors as you plan to use. Scoop out even portions of cake mix into the separate bowls, leaving at least 1/3 of the vanilla cake mix in the large mixer bowl.
Using gel food coloring or liquid food coloring, add a little bit of food coloring to each of the separate bowls of vanilla batter. When you mix up the gel food colors or the liquid food colors into the small bowls of batter, add a tiny drop of color at a time until you get the best color vibrancy for your liking. Then, move on to the next bowl.
For the cake in these photos, we used three small bowls of separate colors.We have purple batter, pink batter, and blue-green (teal) batter for a pastel rainbow cake for Easter. Again, you can make the color combinations any color you want for you own customized rainbow cake.
In a greased 9×13 cake pan, you will pour the regular vanilla batter into the bottom of the pan. Next, take the colored bowls of batter and pour them over the vanilla batter. You may need to use a spoon or rubber spatula to scrape out every last drop from the sides of the bowl and the bottom of the bowl.
Afterward, take a butter knife and swirl quickly through the entire cake. This will result in the plain vanilla batter at the bottom of the cake with the colorful swirls reaching the top of the cake.
You will bake in a 350 degree oven for 22-25 minutes or until the cake is golden brown on top, the edges have pulled in slightly, and the middle is not jiggly.
How to Frost the Outside of the Cake (Rainbow Cake Frosting)
We prefer to use a white frosting with colorful jimmies or sprinkles to develop a rainbow frosting. This is a simple way to bring the rainbow concept to the frosting. However, you can easily add some food coloring to homemade vanilla frosting to give your frosting a color. Or you could add a cup of frosting in one color and then add different colors to bowls of remaining frosting to create an ombre effect on your rainbow swirl cake.
Again, our cake uses simple homemade vanilla buttercream frosting with colorful pastel cake sprinkles on top. Using homemade buttercream frosting is yet another way to elevate a box mix cake.
Storing Leftover Cake
This cake will last several days when stored at room temperature in an airtight container. Our guess is that it won’t last too long!
Rainbow Swirl Cake with Food Coloring for Parties
Ingredients
- 15.25 oz Vanilla cake mix We like Betty Crocker French Vanilla
- 3.4 oz Instant vanilla pudding mix Optional
- 4 Eggs
- ⅓ cup Vegetable oil
- 1 cup Water
- 6 tsp Food coloring Or more, depending on vibrancy (colors of your choice)
- 2 cups Vanilla frosting Homemade or store bought
- Sprinkles
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease a 9×13 inch metal or foil cake pan.
- In a large mixing bowl add cake mix and pudding mix (if using), eggs, oil, water and whisk until well incorporated.
- Split half of the cake mixture into 3 small bowls.
- Pour the other half of the cake batter into the prepared cake pan.
- Place two to three drops of food coloring into each small bowl of cake batter and mix, wiping spoon clean between bowls.
- Spoon each colored cake batter mixture on top of the plain vanilla cake batter in the pan. You do not need to worry about the pattern. Just drop the spoonfuls on top.
- Using a butter knife, swirl the colorful batter so that colors mix together in a swirly pattern.
- Bake uncovered in the oven for 22-25 minutes or until the cake appears golden brown and the edges pull away from the pan. The center should be set.
- Allow cake to cool and frost with vanilla frosting of choice. Top with sprinkles.
Nutrition
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