Colorful Marbled Birthday Cake

For Holly's birthday she insisted on lemon cake.  She'd never had lemon cake before, but was determined to have it nonetheless.  I started with a plain vanilla cake recipe, but added the zest of two lemons and substituted half of the water for fresh squeezed lemon juice.

I added some pretty colored sugar sprinkles to the batter, but it still didn't look quite pretty enough.  Something seemed lacking.  So, I decided to marble the cake with food coloring.






























I divided the cake batter into two round cake pans and dotted neon food coloring on top.  Then, I ran a toothpick through the colors in a figure eight pattern... dragging the toothpick in and out of each color until the batter took on a marbelized look.

After baking, I iced the cake with a thin layer of lemon icing and put it in the freezer to set.  Once the icing had hardened a bit, I frosted the cake with cream cheese frosting and decorated it with her name in tinted lemon icing and a rhinestone tiara.



Cutting into the cake was a thrill with each layer revealing delicate strands of color inside.  Everyone loved it!