Let’s just get one thing clear, this is NOT clean eating, it’s a cake full of butter, sugar, flour and colouring, but it only happens once a year so indulge a little and add an extra 10 minutes to your workout routine tomorrow.
I cannot remember when last I was this excited baking a cake! in fact I can’t remember when last I actually did bake a cake either, so much so that I had no choice but to buy a cake tin since I don’t own one. Strange I know! I normally end up baking cupcakes, probably because I didn’t have a cake tin…lol.
Ever since I saw a picture of a Ombre cake I had an urge to bake one and what better occasion than for my husband’s birthday.
Ombre is the French term for “shaded”. This cake is actually not so complicated as one might think, although it’s a bit time-consuming if you only have one cake tin and you have a power failure half way through the baking process. Note to myself, buy another cake tin!
My family just loved it! 
and so did I since I couldn’t stop taking pictures.
Recipe
360 g Cake flour
1 tbsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
225 ml milk
2 tsp vanilla extract/essence
400 g Castor sugar
225 Butter
4 Eggs
Blue and red food colouring
1 Tin Caramel condensed milk for spreading between the layers / Strawberry Jam
Icing
500 g icing sugar sifted
275 g Butter
Pinch of salt to taste
100′s & 1000′s sprinkles to decorate
Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a round cake tin (mine is 22cm) with butter and sprinkle with cake flour.
Combine flour, baking powder and salt in bowl and set aside.
Using an electric mixer on low-speed, beat sugar and butter in a large bowl until creamy. Add eggs one by one mixing well after every addition.
Add cake flour mix and milk alternatively to the butter and egg mixture until smooth, add vanilla and mix through.
Divide your cake batter in 5 separate bowls. I’ve used a big spoon adding a spoonful to each bowl. Each bowl contained +- 2.5 spoons of batter.
Leave one bowl white. in a small separate bowl mix 3 teaspoons blue and red food colouring. Add one tsp colouring to each bowl of batter and mix. now add a little extra to each bowl making it darker as you move along. For my second layer I’ve added an extra few drops of red colouring to give it a warm purple colour. I did the same with my last layer by adding a few extra drops of blue colouring.
There is really no wrong or right way in doing it as long as your colours is not all the same.
This is what mine looked like.
Bake each layer and let it cool on a wire rack. In the meantime mix your icing by beating the butter with an electric mixer adding the icing sugar gradually.
Assemble cake by placing the lightest colour on the bottom. Spread a nice layer of Caramel/Jam in between cakes and finish of by icing and sprinkling with 100′s & 1000′s sprinkles.
Tips
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Bake the cakes by starting with the lightest shade, meaning you can start to assemble your cake as each cake have cooled down.
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