Happy Birthday Radish!

I can't believe a year has gone past since the birth of my lovely little Radish. (August 13th) He has brought so much joy to our lives and we feel very lucky that after many years of never thinking we would have children that he came along. We celebrated the day with a party for him and his cousins at his grandparents house.

I knew that I wanted to mark the occasion with a memorable cake as I have a photo on my fridge of the cake my mum made me for my first birthday and I treasure that. (My mum died when she was 36 and I was 15)

So what to do - My dad thought I should do a teddy too but that is my special cake so after many days trawling the internet for inspiration (don't you just love it for stuff like that!) I decided upon a rainbow cake.

Now if you have never seen one of these, they really are show stoppers. You bake up six coloured layers  of cake, a red, orange, yellow, green, blue and a purple one.  I took a basic cake recipe from my mum's old Durham WI cookbook and just adjusted the amount to make it work, then split it equally between six tubs.  I had great fun mixing up the colours.

I had to review the cooking of time as I overcooked the blue and purple layers which is why they have a slight brown hue. ( Think the old cookers mustn't have got as hot as they do now days?)

Then you layer them up (and a word of warning - it makes a tall cake!) with buttercream or cream cheese inbetween ...

....and then cover it totally to finish the surprise.

I love my nephew's face! He claimed it was the best cake ever! Good lad! ;-)

So alongside, all the presents he got, Radish had a fab first birthday. Here's to many more! Just have to start thinking of the next cake...