Karate Kids! A karate themed rainbow cake

This is going to be a semi-long and moderately detailed post on how to make a less involved rainbow cake with a karate theme. Specific enough?

Last Sunday two of my nieces earned their black belts in karate. They worked so very hard, so we wanted to help with the celebration. Admittedly my knowledge of martial arts comes directly from the movie 3 Ninjas. I feel no shame about this. 

Since I knew this would be a big project, I enlisted their younger sister as my baker's assistant and we set out to make an over-the-top, black belt worthy cake. 

Originally I thought it would be a good idea to learn how to use fondant effectively, but then I changed my mind. It seemed really, really involved and the last thing I wanted was to be making an already complicated cake any more complicated. So I found an already complicated cake and made it easier. That's how I like to handle things.

Also just ignore all of the nutritional information for this cake. It's horrible. It's reaaaaaaaaly bad. What can I say, it's cake! But just so you know this was a TALL cake and it took a 3-4 days to eat by 10 people. I think that makes me feel better and you should feel better about that too. Ignorance is bliss and also apparently thousands of calories.

I'm not going to do like the other recipes because it's more of a "building project" than a recipe. 

But the materials I used were: 

Two boxes of white cake mix + eggs and oil

3.5 cans of vanilla frosting

Crisco

Random Sprinkles

Odense Marzipan almond candy dough

Food coloring

Icing pens for decoration

Black licorice

Wilton food coloring spray

Non-food Equiptment

Two 9 in. round baking pans

Karate shaped cookie cutters

Rolling pin

Mixer

A RIDICULOUS amount of mixing bowls

Parchment Paper

And then I will explain the "phases" of this "building project." Sorry I'm in love with quotation marks today.

PHASE ONE: Planning

PHASE TWO: Caaaaaake

PHASE THREE: Decorating

PHASE FOUR: What is phase four?

PHASE ONE: Planning
FIRST I knew I wanted to do a cake with all the belt colors inside. I found this cake online and read the instructions and watched a video of her on Martha Stewart. 

Then I thought, "that seems like a lot of work to make a cake and icing from scratch." It's really not that much more work but I didn't feel like doing it. So there. 

Then I picked up my niece who told me that I and the internet are both morons. There are EIGHT belt colors not six. Thankfully she takes karate too and was able to be the brains behind the operation.

We knew we were doing a rainbow cake and would use the ninjabread men cookie cutters I found over the summer at Target to put the girls on the top of the cake. We would make a black belt for the cake around the bottom made out of black licorice that we knew no one would ever want to eat. 

PHASE TWO: Caaaaaake

We mixed the ingredients for the first box of cake and then separated it evenly into four small mixing bowls. It doesn't seem like a lot because it's not. Don't be alarmed. 

The layers of cake ready to be fully frosted.

I only had two round pans so we did each layer 2 at a time. I put crisco on EVERY pan every time so the cakes popped right out. I highly suggest this.

We baked them at 350 and my oven took about 12 minutes but we checked every few minutes on the first batch to make sure they would come out okay.

When two cakes were done we moved them to a cooling area and let the pans cool down before we cleaned, re-greased and started another batch. While the cakes and pans cooled we cleaned out bowls and started mixing the second box of cake. Definitely a two lady job!

We started with the bottom colors so once they were cooled we could just start layering and frosting. 

Layers Baked Together

White (no color added) & Orange

Yellow & Green

Blue & Brown (One drop of red, yellow and blue until desired shade)

Red & Black (we used black food coloring)

We used about 2/3 a cup of frosting between each layer of cake but use as much as you need.

When we were done we put a thin layer of icing around the cake and put it in the refrigerator for about an hour while we ate lunch. When it was done cooling we put the final layer which was really complicated and looked a hot mess. But more on that later...

PHASE THREE: Decorating

While I iced the cakes, my niece decorated the karate girls for the top of the cake.

 

Niece #3 decorating her almond flavored mini-sisters!

We used almond flavored marzipan because I didn't want to play with fondant and we only need a little bit anyway. Also, it was on the same aisle at the store and was less money. Of course it was the winner. 

Basically you break off a piece, roll it with a rolling pin in between two pieces of parchment paper and then use cookie cutters for your desired design.

It was so easy I can't believe I've never heard of it before. I'll definitely be using it in the future.

We used white and black icing pens for the design and used some extra flower shaped sprinkles I had to put in their hair so you could tell it they had ponytails etc. Then we just wrote what we had room for with the same icing pens. Pretty easy!

Then came the hard part. As you'll see we couldn't get the icing consistency right to be smooth (I guess that's what I get for not making it from scratch. Whatever!) 

Since it looked ridiculous we went to my baking box to find a solution. Our solution was to use spray food coloring by Wilton to color the sides of the cake and hopefully camouflage the imperfections. Since gradient is sooooo cool I just lightly sprayed, just like spray paint, while I turned the cake. As I kept turning I moved downward until the bottom of the cake was really red and the top of the side was just a light pinky-red color. It worked like a charm.

Then we surrounded the cake with its very own black belt made of disgusting black licorice which no one ate. :)

The finished product!

We stored the cake overnight in the fridge because my cake cover wouldn't fit over it. It was too tall! 

PHASE FOUR: What is phase four?

Then final phase of this very long post is the celebration!

Was the cake perfect? no. 

I strongly believe that anyone else who attempts this will make it a MILLION times better and way more attractive and I hope you send me pictures. 

When we were layering I thought, "what dull colors." Even Husband thought that the colors looked bland. When we cut into it the colors were so vibrant I almost shed a tear of relief! It was BEAUTIFULLY colorful!

Karate Kids!

Did the girls love it? Absolutely. 

Especially because their little sister helped make them a tasty treat to celebrate a huge accomplishment. While eating this cake they were already brainstorming what they'll make for her black belt test next year. So sweet!

I'm not saying my nieces have inspired me to take up karate, but I could totally go for a kickboxing class. How's that for gymspiration? These are strong, athletic little girls and they are now officially the most dangerous people I am related too. You go girls!

XO, Andrea