Easy Rainbow Cake Recipe: Celebrate Pride Month Anytime With This Festive Rainbow Cake by Ann Marie G. Halstead

You can celebrate Pride Month all month long (and anytime) by baking a rainbow cake! According to the Library of Congress, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month is celebrated in June each year to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City. The first Pride march in NYC was held on June 28, 1970, on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.

Whether or not you celebrate Pride Month, you can put your creative culinary skills to work by baking every color of the rainbow into this fun and delicious cake, with one color for every cake layer. This rainbow cake recipe makes a 9-inch round, six-layer cake with a light and fluffy mascarpone creamy cheese frosting.

This fun dessert recipe is equally festive at birthday parties, holidays or other celebrations that call for lots of color. This month and throughout the year, let’s celebrate life and love by eating cake and celebrating everyone for who they are!

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Cuisine: American
Prep Time: 10 minutes plus 2 hours to chill 
Cook Time: 1 1/2 hours
Total Time: 3 hours and 40 minutes
Servings: 12

Ingredients

Cake 

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/3 cups milk
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 5 large egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• food coloring in rainbow colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet
• rainbow sprinkles (optional)

Frosting 

• 2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 2 containers (8 ounces each) mascarpone cheese

Helpful Products

Electric Mixers

Cake Pans

Recipe Notes

• To make this cake even more festive, you can add rainbow sprinkles if you like.
• A scoop of your favorite colorful ice cream would be a fun add on to this cake.

Here's how to make it: 

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease six 9-inch round cake pans and dust with flour. 
2. Sift together flour, baking soda and baking powder.
3. In a large bowl, beat 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, the milk, sugar, egg whites and vanilla extract with an electric mixer until smooth. Stir in flour mixture and then mix until just combined.
4. Divide cake batter evenly among six bowls. Mix in a different food coloring in each bowl (starting with 1 or 2 drops food coloring per bowl), creating six different colored batters. Add more food coloring if necessary, to reach desired colors.
5. Bake each cake in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 15 to 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.
   
6. Beat cream in a metal or chilled glass bowl with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. In a separate bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and mascarpone cheese, then fold gently into the whipped cream until smooth.
7. Spread frosting on each layer of cooled cake, placing one on top of the other. Cover the top and sides with the remaining frosting. Decorate with rainbow sprinkles, if desired. Refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.

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