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Rainbow Vanilla Layer Cake

Rainbow Vanilla Layer Cake with Whipped Cream Frosting
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This Rainbow Vanilla Layer Cake is the ultimate showstopper for birthdays, celebrations, or any time you want a “wow” moment. While it looks like a work of art, the flavor is pure, nostalgic bliss. By using cake flour for a fine crumb and sour cream for incredible moisture, this vanilla cake is light, airy, and anything but basic.

The signature 6-inch, five-layer tower creates a stunning vertical rainbow when sliced, making it the perfect centerpiece for your dessert table.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• The Perfect Crumb: The combination of butter and cake flour creates a melt-in-your-mouth texture that stays tender for days.

• Not-Too-Sweet Frosting: We’ve ditched the heavy buttercream for a cloud-like whipped heavy cream frosting.

• Perfectly Stabilized: Using Whip It ensures your frosting stays fluffy and holds its shape without wilting, even in multi-layer builds.

• Customizable: While the 5-layer rainbow is our favorite, this versatile batter works perfectly for 2-layer or 3-layer cakes as well.

Ingredients

Units Scale

Cake

  • 2 1/2 cups (285 grams) cake flour, sifted
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks; 170 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 3/4 cups (340 grams) granulated sugar
  • 3 large eggs, room temperature
  • 1/2 cup (120 grams) sour cream
  • 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1 cup (240 ml) whole milk, room temperature

Frosting

  • 1 quart of heavy whipping cream, very cold
  • 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
  • 4 packages of Whip It whipped cream stabilizer
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • sprinkles, cookies, vanilla chips, chopped candy bars or berries for decoration

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease your cake pans and line them with parchment paper and grease the parchment as well.
  2. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Set aside.
  3. In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar until creamy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix on high speed for another 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a silicone spatula. Add the sour cream and mix on low speed for another minute. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low until just barely combined. With the mixer on low, drizzle in the milk and stop the mixer once are done with all the milk. You can continue to fold the batter by hand with a silicone spatula to finish mixing and scrape down the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl.
  4. Divide the batter evenly into cake pans. There will be approximately 1350 grams of batter. Use a food scale and divide 1350 by the number of cake pans you are using to help you get even layers.

Equipment

Notes

  • The amount of frosting from 4 cups of heavy cream yields approximately 1040 grams.  For a six inch round, five layer cake, I used 1/2 cup (65 grams) of frosting between the layers.

Find it online: https://moderateposh.com/rainbow-vanilla-cake/