A Brilliant Cake to Make
Whitney DePaoli’s recipe for Rainbow Striped Milk & Cereal Cake will give you culinary kudos for years to come. Here’s how you make it.
BY HEJIRA CONVERY, KINDICARE
Hamish Blake is famous for his ambitious cake nights, but if you’re hoping to make something marvellous with more of a morning vibe, then we have an ahhhh-mazing recipe you can try (or at least drool over).
It’s called a Rainbow Striped Milk & Cereal Cake, and this thing is next level. Like, literally!
It’s three levels of delectable sponge, made with the ‘goodness’ of Froot Loops and milk, then tied together with a rainbow rope of buttercream icing, rainbow stripes and some mini-marshmallows for good measure.
This culinary showstopper is guaranteed to wow your crowd, and it tastes as good as it looks, but the best thing about this cake is that it’s possible for us mere mortals to make!
This recipe comes from a book called Anyone Can Cake by Whitney DePaoli (of Sugar & Sparrow fame), and although it requires a BIG icing sugar commitment and a little bit of buttercream trickery, life is all about learning new skills, and you can skip the rainbow rope and stripes if things get too hard.
Allow 65 minutes for prep and 30 to 35 minutes for baking, and without further ado, here are your ingredients and instructions.
Good luck, and here’s to the best cake day yet!
INGREDIENTS
Cereal Milk
1 ½ cups Froot Loops cereal
1 ½ cups whole milk
Milk & Cereal Cake
1 ⅔ cups Froot Loops cereal
2 ½ cups sifted cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
170g unsalted butter, at room temperature
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 ½ cups white sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
120g sour cream, at room temperature
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
Note: You’ll end up with about ¾ cup of cereal powder after grinding the cereal.
Cereal Milk Buttercream
565g unsalted butter, at room temperature
10 ½ cups (yes, 1.3 kg!) icing sugar
6 tbsp whole milk, at room temperature
1 ½ tbsp pure vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt, or as needed
Note: The reason there’s so much buttercream is to make sure you have enough for creating the rainbow stripes and rainbow rope border. If you’d rather make just enough to fill and frost the cake, you can halve the buttercream portion of the recipe.
Filling & Topping
1 cup colourful mini-marshmallows, divided, like these from Big W
Food Colour Gels
Soft gel paste in Soft Pink
Soft gel paste in Lemon Yellow
Soft gel paste in Sky Blue
Note: In Australia, food colour gels are stocked by places like Kitchen Warehouse and Spotlight.
INSTRUCTIONS
Make the Cereal Milk
Place the cereal in a medium bowl. Pour the milk over the cereal and let the cereal soak in the milk for 15 minutes. Strain out and discard the cereal and reserve the milk to use in the cake and buttercream recipes.
Make the Milk & Cereal Cake
1. Preheat the oven to 177°C. Prepare three 15cm (or two 20cm) round cake pans by spraying the sides with baking spray and fitting a circle of baking paper to the bottom of each pan.
2. Grind the cereal in a food processor to the consistency of a fine powder (making ¾ cup), then place it in a medium bowl. Add the sifted flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk the ingredients to combine them, then set the cereal-flour mixture aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at high speed for 2 minutes, until it is light and creamy. Add the oil and white sugar, then mix the ingredients at medium-high speed for 2 minutes, scraping the bowl and paddle once at the halfway point. Decrease the mixer’s speed to low and add the eggs one at a time, mixing just until the last egg is well combined. Add the sour cream and vanilla and mix the ingredients at high speed for 1 minute. Scrape the bowl and paddle once more.
4. Turn the mixer off and add the cereal-flour mixture all at once. Start the mixer at low speed. Mix the ingredients until they are just combined, then add the Cereal Milk in a steady stream. Mix the ingredients until they are just incorporated. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and stir the batter a few times to make sure there are no lumps. The batter will be slightly thick.
5. Divide the batter between the prepared cake pans. Bake the cakes for 30 to 35 minutes. They’re done when they spring back to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the centres comes out clean. Let the cakes cool in their pans for 5 minutes, then remove them from the pans and allow them to cool completely on a wire rack.
Make the Cereal Milk Buttercream
1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at high speed for 7 minutes, until it is fluffy and almost white in colour, scraping the bowl and paddle a few times during this process.
2. Decrease the mixer’s speed to low and add the icing sugar 2 cups at a time, scraping the bowl and paddle after each addition. Add the Cereal Milk, vanilla and salt and mix the ingredients at low speed for 1 to 2 minutes, until the ingredients are fully incorporated and the frosting is smooth.
Assemble the Cake
1. Level the cooled cake layers to your desired height. Fill and stack the cake layers with a layer of Cereal Milk Buttercream, sprinkling each layer of buttercream filling with ¼ cup of diced up marshmallows. Crumb coat the cake with Cereal Milk Buttercream. Chill the crumb-coated cake in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to allow the frosting to firm up.
2. Reserve 2 cups of the Cereal Milk Buttercream for the rainbow rope border.
3. Use the remaining Cereal Milk Buttercream to follow this Striped Buttercream Tutorial to create a rainbow-striped finish. You’ll need a cake comb that makes six stripes. Begin the tutorial with uncoloured Cereal Milk Buttercream, then, after using the cake comb to create the grooves, divide the remaining buttercream equally among six bowls.
4. To create a rainbow-stripe colour palette, use the food colouring gels and the six bowls of buttercream from step 3 to make pink, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple buttercream: Add 2 drops of Soft Pink to the first bowl to make pink; add 1 drop of Soft Pink and 1 drop of Lemon Yellow to the second bowl to make orange; add 2 drops of Lemon Yellow to the third bowl to make yellow; add 1 drop of Lemon Yellow and 1 very small drop of Sky Blue to the fourth bowl to make green; add 1 drop of Sky Blue to the fifth bowl to make blue; and add 1 drop of Soft Pink and 1 very small drop of Sky Blue to the sixth bowl to make purple. Mix the food colouring into each of the bowls separately with a clean spoon.
5. Place each of the rainbow colours into separate piping bags and use them to fill in the grooves and complete the Striped Buttercream Tutorial.
6. While the buttercream stripes are still sticky, place ¼ cup marshmallow bits a few inches apart all over the sides of the cake.
7. To create the rainbow rope border, divide the 2 cups of reserved Cereal Milk Buttercream among four bowls. Use the same food colouring gel ratios from step 4 to create pink, yellow, blue and purple buttercream. Place each buttercream colour in a separate piping bag and use clean scissors to snip off a 1.3cm opening on each bag.
8. Cut a 25cm piece of plastic wrap and lay it out on a flat surface. Pipe each buttercream colour in a straight line onto the plastic wrap with the colours directly next to one another in this order: pink, yellow, blue, purple.
9. Roll up the plastic wrap so that the pink and purple buttercream meet, and then snip off an opening on the end of the plastic wrap.
10. Prepare a piping bag with a Wilton tip 1M and place the plastic-wrapped buttercream in it with the open side toward the piping tip.
11. Create a rope border around the top edge of the cake with the rainbow buttercream. Sprinkle the remaining marshmallow bits on the rainbow rope border, and get ready for the best birthday yet!
This gorgeous cake recipe is reprinted with permission from Anyone Can Cake by Whitney DePaoli. Published by Page Street Publishing Co. 2023. RRP $44.99.
Photography by Whitney DePaoli, Josiah DePaoli and Abi Porter.
