Rainbow Pinata Cake Recipe (Dairy Free)
My eldest recently turned 8 and for the first time the lead up to the birthday wasn’t filled with constant talk about what the cake would be like! I realised a few days before that we hadn’t planned what he wanted. His only request was that it had chocolate icing and lots of sweets. Easily done. We decided on pinata cake. As I would be doing multiple layers i decided to give a rainbow cake a go at the same time.
It took a while to make it as I ended up having two 5 year olds and the almost 8 year old helping me. I thought this would be a nightmare but worked out great. We had great fun mixing all the different colours and their hands weren’t too dyed by the time we were finished!
Rainbow Pinata Cake
Dairy Free Delicious Birthday Cake
You will need:
550g self raising flour
250g dairy free margarine
550g caster sugar
4 eggs
320ml water
For Icing & Decoration:
330g dairy free margarine
510g icing sugar
165g sieved cocoa
5-6 tbsp almond milk
Sprinkles, dairy free chocolate buttons or any other decorations you would like for the top.
2 x 174g Skittles (Tear and Share size) or similar amount of other dairy free sweets.
Making the Cake
- Grease and line 2 nine inch round cake tins or 3 if you have them.
- Preheat oven to 180C / 170C Fan / 350F / Gas 4
- Sieve flour into a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients and beat together in an electric mixer or hand mixer until smooth.
- Divide into 6 different bowls.
- Add food colouring to each bowl, one yellow, one orange, one red, one blue, one purple, one green. I had only 4 gel colours so I used yellow and red together to make orange and red and blue to make green. Stir each until you have a smooth colour. Add more food colouring if you need to make a darker colour.
- Put one mixture into each tin. Start in the order purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red as that is the order you will work with the cakes once they are cooled.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes and test with a skewer. It is done when skewer comes out clean.
- Stand for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool.
- Repeat for the next two colours, then the last two.
- Allow cake to cool completely.
Making the Icing
- Beat the margarine until soft. Add half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth.
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Add the remaining icing sugar, cocoa powder and 2 tablespoons of the milk and beat until creamy. Beat in more milk if necessary to loosen the icing.
Icing and Decorating
- Work first with the purple cake. If it has risen in the middle, trim off the raised bit with a bread knife and trim away any crusty bits from the side. Use a glass tumbler to make a hole in the centre of the cake layer (I used a champagne glass as it has a smaller diameter but I think a tumbler would work better). Place in the freezer for 15 minutes.
- Repeat Step 1 for each of the other cake layers but do not put a hole in centre of red layer.
- Remove purple layer from freezer and spread icing over the top of the layer. Put Blue layer on top. Repeat for layers green, yellow and orange.
- Place the cake on your serving plate or platter.
- Pour sweets into tumbler and pour into the centre of the cake until it’s full.
- Place the red layer on top of the cake.
- Place whole cake in freezer for 15 minutes at this stage.
- Cover the entire cake with the icing. Use a palette knife to smooth it out.
- Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands or decorate with more sweets or as you wish.
Brilliant Laura! It just goes to show that kids who need to stick to a dairy free diet don’t need to miss out on all the fun and delicious looking food especially come birthday time. One thing – you know once my son sees this he is going to want a similar one for his 7th birthday!! Love your website, reviews and resources. Keep up the great work :)
Thanks so much Jason, really loved this comment. :) Absolutely they don’t need to miss out. I might be guilty of overcompensating with junk food!!Good luck with recreating for your son :-D And happy birthday to him!