Rainbow Green Velvet Cake
Green velvet cake with a delicate, moist texture and the perfect amount of sweetness. Covered in a smooth silky swiss buttercream frosting in a rainbow effect for St. Patrick's Day!
I don't know what to say about this cake, except that it's AWESOME! I came up with the idea of doing rainbow frosting like this a few weeks ago and haven't been able to stop thinking about it! As soon as I got the chance to make it this week I jumped at it. And I'm so happy with how pretty the rainbow came out! It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and a lot easier than it looks.
Am I crazy for doing this? Maybe. But I love it! I'm actually considering making it again for actual St. Patty's Day. Our family does a traditional Irish meal with corned beef and cabbage each year, and I think this cake would be perfect! It will also be my sister's birthday weekend, and her homecoming from being on her mission, sooo I think some sort of cake is definitely in order, don't you?
It's just so perfect for St. Patrick's Day- rainbows and green! Last year I did something similar with green velvet cupcakes and rainbow swirl frosting.
I tweaked the recipe for my green velvet cake a little to make it even better. I went with a combination of butter and oil, instead of just oil which made the texture amazing . This "green velvet" is really a red velvet cake recipe but instead of red food coloring, we're using green food coloring. In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day! It still tastes just like a red velvet cake. The texture is just PERFECT!
It's moist, delicate, and fluffy. The flavor is delicious! It's buttermilk-y, with just the right amount of a hint of chocolate. And the frosting?? To die for!!!
The frosting recipe is from Sweetapolita. Swiss Meringue Buttercream is a little intimidating at first, but I think it tastes 10000x better than normal buttercream frosting. It doesn't have the overly sweet flavor that buttercream has from the powdered sugar. It's silky smooth, light, creamy, and just enough sweetness. I love it. If you haven't tried it before, you really should!
Don't you just love the pop of the bright green cake?
For the frosting technique, I made one batch of Swiss Meringue Buttercream and divided it evenly into 6 small bowls. Each bowl I dyed a different color of the rainbow. Then I filled 6 sealable plastic bags with the different colors, one bag for each color. I snipped one of the bottom corners of each of the bags off with scissors to create an opening to pipe the frosting through, about 1/3 inch wide.
When frosting in between the cake layers, I (roughly) piped circles of the rainbow colors to fill the area. You can see my photos below of the steps. It didn't need to be perfect because it would get smoothed out anyway. I started in the middle with a filled circle of red, and went around that in orange, yellow, green, etc.
With an offset spatula, I put the tip in the center of the red circle in the middle, and gently spun the cake around in a circle, keeping the offset spatula in the same place, so that it didn't mix the colors. Just make sure when you lift the spatula off that you move it in same the circular direction so the colors don't mix when you lift it off. You also want to wipe the spatula completely clean after every use!
I repeated this for the 2 filling layers, alternating the color directions, and on the top of the outside of the cake. So the first layer had red in the middle, the second layer had purple in the middle, and the top had red in the middle.
After the filling and the top were piped, I went around the outside of the cake and moved down. I started with red at the top and piped the rainbow down to the bottom. To smooth it, I placed the offset spatula vertically against the side of the cake and gently turned the cake to smooth it out. This helped to fill in any gaps, and scrape off any excess in places with too much, while still keeping the colors separate. Each time that I lifted the spatula off, I wiped it clean to make sure that I wasn't mixing the colors.
I hope the pictures below can provide some assistance and understanding for the steps! May the luck of the Irish be with you! :)
Green Velvet Cake
Yield: 3 8-inch layers
Ingredients
- 1/2 c. butter, room temperature
- 2 1/4 cups sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 1 T. vanilla
- 1 cup oil
- 1 t. distilled white vinegar
- 1-2 oz. green food coloring
- 3 cups cake flour
- 1 t. baking soda
- 1 T. cocoa powder
- 1 /2 t. salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
Cooking Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and prepare 3 8-inch cake pans with cooking spray.
- Cream together butter and sugar on high for 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.
- Mix in eggs, one at a time, until incorporated well.
- Mix in vanilla, oil, and vinegar.
- Add food coloring until the brightness and deepness of the color is to your liking.
- Add 1 cup of cake flour, baking soda, and salt, and gently combine.
- Add 1/2 cup of buttermilk and combine.
- Add another 1 cup of cake flour and combine.
- Add the buttermilk until combined, and then the remaining 1 cup of cake flour.
- Once everything is incorporated, divide batter evenly among the 3 cake pans.
- Bake at 350 F for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out with just a few crumbs.
- Let cool in pans for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.
- Let cakes cool completely before frosting.
Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting from Sweetapolita.
