Rainbow Cake with Clouds

The book is selling. Not bestseller numbers — modest sales, the kind that a small-press literary cookbook achieves. But the reviews are beautiful and the blog traffic has quadrupled and people are writing to me from kitchens I'll never visit, making sambar and rasam and dosa from my mother's recipes. A woman in Tokyo made the coconut chutney and sent a photo. A man in London made the biryani for his Indian wife's birthday. A teenager in Toronto made rasam for her grandmother who has dementia. 'The rasam didn't fix her,' the teenager wrote. 'But she smiled when she smelled it.' She smiled when she smelled it. The sambar moment, replicated. In Toronto. By a teenager. With someone else's grandmother. The book is doing what I hoped: traveling. The recipes, the stories, the generous pinch — they're in other hands now, in other kitchens, feeding other families. The preservation worked. The ark landed. I've started getting speaking invitations. Food conferences, immigrant storytelling events, a podcast about mothers and cooking. The pharmacist from Edison is becoming a known voice in the food-writing world, which is the most unlikely career development since Arvind became a business owner. I made Amma's sambar to celebrate. Because sambar is how I celebrate everything, and the sambar is the reason the book exists, and the book is the reason people in Tokyo are grinding coconut. The sambar was right. It's always right now. The learning is done. The knowing is permanent. The food remembers. In Tokyo and London and Toronto and Edison. Everywhere someone opens the book and starts cooking. The food remembers.

The sambar was made — it is always made first, always the anchor — but when a teenager in Toronto can make your mother’s rasam and a grandmother smiles through dementia, that is not a sambar-only moment. That is a every color you own moment. I wanted something on the table that looked the way the news felt: loud and layered and improbably bright. A rainbow cake, clouds of frosting and all, felt exactly right for the day the ark officially landed.

Prep Time: 40 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 1 hr 10 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
Gel food coloring in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple
For the cloud frosting:
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3–4 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of salt

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease and flour six 8-inch round cake pans (or work in batches). Line the bottoms with parchment rounds.
Mix dry ingredients. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in vanilla.
Combine wet and dry. Reduce speed to low. Add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk in two additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix just until combined — do not overmix.
Divide and color. Divide the batter evenly among six bowls (about 3/4 cup each). Tint each bowl a different color of the rainbow using gel food coloring, stirring until uniform. Pour each color into a prepared pan and spread to the edges.
Bake. Bake 18–22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes, then turn out onto wire racks and cool completely.
Make the cloud frosting. Beat butter on medium speed until very pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time, mixing on low. Add vanilla, salt, and cream one tablespoon at a time until the frosting is soft, billowy, and spreadable.
Stack and frost. Place the purple layer on a cake board or plate. Spread a thin, even layer of frosting on top. Continue stacking in rainbow order (purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red). Apply a thin crumb coat over the entire outside of the cake and refrigerate 20 minutes. Finish with a thick, swirled “cloud” coat of frosting on the outside, leaving it textured and generous.
Slice and reveal. Cut through all six layers to reveal the rainbow inside. Serve immediately or store covered at room temperature up to 2 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Rainbow Cake with Clouds — Because the Ark Landed, and That Deserves Every Color