As I was planning for my daughter’s 5th birthday party, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Donna Hay magazine’s annual kids’ issue.  Judging by the cover of the magazine, I would surely find something beautiful inside to make for my daughter’s birthday.  On the morning of the magazine’s release, I bought my copy and started flipping through the pages.  There were so many neat things, including the cover recipe for chocolate cups.  But I found what I wanted on page 115.  It was called a rainbow layer cake, but it looked more like neapolitan cake, with chocolate, pink and white layers, rather than a rainbow.  There was what looked to be a fluffy, white frosting in between the layers and all over the cake.  Dotting the frosting in 3 rings around the cake were pink and white mini marshmallows that had been cut in half.  It looked really beautiful and it looked exactly like something my daughter would love.  There’s a picture of the cake in the magazine at the bottom of this post.

I was a little skeptical about the cake to begin with.  One reason is because I have never had a good result from any recipe I’ve tried from Donna Hay.  I think the reason for this is that Donna Hay is a food stylist, not a chef!  Another reason I was skeptical about this cake is because the entire thing contains 750 grams, or 1.7 pounds, of butter.  That is a lot of butter.  Unfortunately, I still wanted to make it and my reasoning was that it was just a birthday cake, we don’t eat that much butter all the time!

I was also skeptical because the way this cake is made involves a method I have never used before.  Donna Hay calls it “melt and mix”.  250 grams of butter is melted, then the entire list of ingredients is dumped together into the mixing bowl at once and then mixed.  This is not the normal way to make cake.  This method is used in most of the birthday cake/cupcake recipes in Donna Hay’s kids’ magazine.  I want to say right now that I will never make a cake this way again!  There are definitely other things I want to try in the magazine, but I will be using my own favorite cake recipes instead of Donna Hay’s.

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