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My daughter had to take a cake to school for her Music class on the last day of school for the term. Rather than buying a cake or making something boring we decided to make a Rainbow cake. The good thing about Rainbow Cake is that you can make it however you want, with whatever cake mix you want, and whatever icing etc you want.

We decided since the cake was rather tall, that we would try and make it marginally healthier by using sponge cake recipe for the cakes themselves. Sponge cake is a nice light fluffy cake that requires a lot less butter and sugar than most. We made a triple mixture, and split it into 5 breakfast bowls. We then mixed the colours in using a lot more colouring than normal to get a nice strong colour.

We baked each cake for half the usual time (because they were thinner) at 13 minutes each. Each layer was cooked seperately, and left to cool before using a knife to take any larger lumps or mounds off and get them all flat.

We decided to use Jam to stick them together, because it was cheap, easy, and better than icing or cream. Once all layers were aligned and together, we iced with cream cheese icing . This gave the overall flavour of strawberry (from the jam) Cheese cake!

Total time from start to finish,  2 hours plus about 20 minutes to ice it the next day.

For those wondering, i have a definite style. Easy is usually right up the top. Some things may have a lot of ingredients, but if i can throw the lot in a pot and it cooks itself, then its my kinda recipe!

Like a lot of others out there, i have a life, children, a full time job, and really not a lot of time on my hands. I don’t have time to be messing about with fiddly things like chopping dozens and dozens of vegetables, ill just buy them frozen (which is cheaper anyway!) and have a deep freezer full.

Another thing I very much like, and am into, is fairly healthy. I don’t mean over the top, never-eat-anything-bad healthy. I mean, i don’t like to fill my kids up on fats, sugar and deep fry things  most days.  Most of my gravys or sauces are not made from fat, butter, or other. I usually use puree of some sort, which not only gives texture, but a lot of taste. I also have to deal with a gluten and dairy free child, which can mean changes are required.

I have found you can successfully substitute oil in most baking with stewed apple no problems at all, and a butter chicken tastes just as good if made with puree pumpkin plus the same herbs and spices! Fruit goes extremely well with most meats, just as much as vegetables do.  I also find that children will balk at most new foods the first few times, keep at it and get them to try them over and over.  Pays to get them used to healthy diet young so they do it naturally, rather than trying to confront a teenager who is used to living on a diet of poor foods.

If you need to change diet for one reason or another, either health problems, or similar, take it slow! Making wild changes to your diet is the easiest way to trip yourself up, especially if you are changing the diet of a whole family.

As far as Gluten free goes, most recipes are easily able to use Gluten free flour which can be picked up at most supermarket. There is no point paying copious amounts of money for fancy items when you can get the flour and make it yourself.  Bread is one of the few gluten free things that is hard to make right, and we found it just easier to go without for the most part other than the odd loaf bought or made.

Happy Cooking

Liz

Found this website a while back, but i keep going back to it, its amazingly inventive and comes with great ideas and recipes.
Basically, they can make everything from Waffles, cupcakes, doughnuts,to Pizza, Burgers , and even Macaroni Cheese ….. in a Waffle maker! No, i’m not joking!

Go check it out over at http://www.waffleizer.com/