My pink ombre layered Birthday cake and recipe

Mia turned two recently, and we hosted a bit of a family do. For her Birthday cake I thought I would attempt a cake which is a sort of mash up of two popular "Pinterest" cakes which I've already tried - the Kit Kat and Smartie cake and the Rainbow Cake. These coloured layer cakes look really impressive, and they are not really any more difficult than making a normal sponge cake.

I used my tried and tested Victoria sandwich cake recipe, passed down from my Mum which is why it is in imperial measurements. I used double quantities.

Victoria Sandwich cake (double quantities - this will make four layers)

12 oz margarine
12 oz caster sugar
6 eggs
12 oz self-raising flour
Gel food colouring (I used two small tubes, with hindsight I could have done with some more)

Cream the margarine and sugar together, beat in the eggs one at a time then fold in the flour. Divide the mixture into four bowls and add food colouring to each mixture. Add a very small amount for the first layer, then increase each time until you have four bowls of batter in distinct shades. Bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes at 180C.

It really helps if you can have a separate baking tin for each layer so that you can cook them all at once, I picked up a couple of sandwich cake tins in Asda for 89p each.

Remove the cakes from the tins and leave to cool. Then stack them up in order with a very small amount of icing in between the layers to stick them together.

To decorate the cake I used butter icing. I slightly increased the amounts from the recipe on the back of the packet and used 100g butter and 235g icing sugar creamed together, a splash of milk to thin it out and a little bit of red food colouring (a little goes a long way here!). This made the perfect amount to cover the top, insides and sides.

You don't need to worry too much about how the icing looks down the sides as it will be covered up. Two boxes of chocolate fingers was just about enough to go around the edges, and I finished with some pink glittery decorations and some Smarties.

Make sure to cut the cake with a nice sharp knife, and wait for the gasps of amazement as the inside is revealed!