Banana Split Rainbow

I wrote the other day how much of my work is heavily dictated by the imaginings of young children. Recently, my daughter's friend ordered up a very specific cake for her 5th birthday--a Rainbow Cake topped with her new Littlest Pet Shop figures with banana cake and strawberry cake and chocolate filling in between. Rainbow Cake, check! Pet Shop toys, check! Banana cake, check! (I have a great recipe, which I don't share with others, that has been in my husband's family for many years.) Strawberry Cake, check! Chocolate filling, check! Ok, I can do all those things, but when I thought about how banana, strawberry and chocolate might taste in one big bite, I was a little apprehensive.

I asked her Mom if her daughter really wanted all these flavors all together? Yes, absolutely! "I imagine it will taste like a banana split!" she said enthusiastically. Ok then!

The actual shape of the cake, a rainbow, was really exciting for me! I had envisioned this cake as a 3D rainbow with the pets on top of and around it. Mom said they would be fine with a sheet cake with a rainbow design drawn on top. Puh-lease! Too boring! I assured her the 3D rainbow would be much cuter.

I hit a snag when it was time to put the cake together. So there was a layer of banana, a layer of chocolate, and a layer of strawberry. When I had dreamed up the rather large 3D design I had in my head, I had not anticipated how heavy the cake would be or how it would stand up on its own without falling over. Plus it would have to be transported to the party site. i am not an engineer, sadly, and the cake in my head refused to become a reality. So I scaled down the cake to a manageable size, one that would not fall over or implode. The rest of the cake batter and frosting became a second, very simple layer cake that I called the "parents' cake." The rainbow, of course, being for the kids!

I am quite proud of how it turned out in the end. It would have been more impressive as a larger cake, but I don't think I could have handled the stress of moving that cake around and praying it would make it! The birthday girl loved her cake, by the way. The flavors were exactly as she had envisioned in her head, and they actually tasted really great together! A few kids refused to try it--too many flavors jumbled together--but most of them did. I told the birthday girl that she had the honor of creating a brand new cake concoction for Sweetest Whimsy!