Kids and adults, we both like good looking and tasting cake.
And what could be cooler then a good tasting marzipan cake with an included rainbow?

This is a reciep i came up with about 17 months ago, to my own birthday.
I since then enhanced it, until even i ate it. (i'm usually not into cakes...)

It not only looks really cool and tastes good, it also wont dry out as fast as a normal cake would.
I published the reciepe a year ago on my blog and on my board (in german), and i thought that this has to be on instructables.

Step 1: Ingredients and Tools

The ingredients list, usually the most important thing.

I am only used to the metrical system, but for your convenience i used a converting table, to also give you imperial measurements. But maybee you still wanna check that yourself.
I hope Cups are allright? If not, tell me.

If your confused with something, look at the pictures.

Ingredients

375g flour (3 & 3/4 Cups)
250g sugar (1 & 1/2 Cups)
250ml Oil (1/4 quart) dont use oliveoil or any other oil with taste
200g powdered sugar (2 Cups)
200g marzipan (1 Cup )
125ml water (1/10 Quart)
5 eggs
2 packages of vanilla sugar
1/2 package backing powder
Food Dye, 4 would be nice.
Powdered Nutmeg
Powdered Cinamon
Powdered Anise
Artificial rum flavor (so its kids compatible)
Butter (less then a hand full)

Tools
4 Bowls (yeah really)
Kitchenscale
26cm (10 & 1/4 inches) springform pan
Mixer
4 Spoons
1 Teaspoon

Step 2: Preparing the Pan and the Oven

I like to start off with preparing my pan and the oven.

Prehead the oven to 160c (320 Fahrenheit) top & bottomheat.
Trust me, don't use hot air or some other stuff, a cake tastes best with top & bottomheat.

Put a chunk of butter in the pan, and smear it all over the inside of it.
If its worth doing, its worth overdoing.
Use your hand or some kitchenpaper to do it.

Step 3: Preparing All the Powdered Stuff.

Get the biggest of your 4 bowls.
First off we give the sugar and the flour into the bowl.

Followed by 1/2 package backing powder (about a flat teaspoon), and 2 packages of vanilla sugar (2 teaspoons)

Then for the spices.
1 Teaspoon of the cinamon.
1/6 Teaspoon of the Nutmag
1/3 Teaspoon of the Anise

If you got that, stir it.
Yeah i'm not kidding, if you dont mix that good, you gonna have air bubles in your cake from the baking powder

Step 4: Liquid Stuff

Now to the liquid stuff.

The oil and the water go into the jug, then you just add the 5 eggs.

Now to the artificial rum flavor. I don't know if you can get those small "bottle"thingies. If you do, add 1/2 of it.
If you don't, i think it should be about 1/2 teaspoon.

Thats it, no need to stir it.

Step 5: The (more or Less) Solid Stuff

Ok, we are almost finished with preperation.

Just roughly chop up the marzipan. And don't eat all of it while your doing that....
You don't have to use such a big knife, but i'm not used to small ones.

Step 6: Finally Mixing It

Now the mixing process is usually a no brainer.

Just add the liquid into your bowl (where you got the flour, sugar....), and start mixing.
If your dough looks homogenous, add the marzipan.

Now you can't mix it until the marzipan is completely gone.
If you got small crumps left, its ok, that will melt when baking it.

Step 7: Coloring It

If you don't wanna add colors, just skip this and the next step, and pour it directly into the pan.

Now the serious business, adding color.
Split your dough up in the 4 bowls.

Take out one of the "mixingthingies" of your electrical mixer.

Put the yellow food dye into one of the bowls, and mix it.
Well yellow doesn't affect the dough that much, but thats ok.

Then use the same "mixingthingy" for another bowl with the red food dye.

Swap the "mixingthingy" with the one that has no color on it.

Now do a bowl of blue, and after that the bowl with green.

You wanna save some green food dye, we can use that later.

The oof the colors works best that way. Why? Because yellow wont mess up red. And blue wont mess up green.

Green is also the color that works best, so you don't need all of it.

Step 8: A Rainbow Is Born

Now we gonna create our rainbow. And this even works on cloudy days, and at night.

Arange your 4 bowls around the pan, and get a spoon for every bowl.

Now add 1 spoon of one color into the middle of the pan.
Then put another spoon of another color on top of that.
Then another spoon of another color on top of that....
Repeat that, and always alternate colors.
Always in the middle, but don't be to picky with that.

The dough will spread out it self very even, no need to help it.

When your finished, it should look something like the last picture of this step.

Step 9: Baking Is Not That Hard.

If you got all your dough in the pan, put in the oven.
The top of the cake should be at the middle of the oven.

It takes about 40-50 Minutes. How to know its done?
Well there's a trick.

Take a wood or metal skewer, ram into the cake, it should go through the center point of the cake.

If no dough is on the skewer after you take it out, then the cake is finished. You still could leave it for 3-5 more minutes just to be safe.

When your cake turns to dark, but is not finished on the inside, don't worry.
Just take a piece of aluminium foil and cover the cake losely with it.
The foil will prevent heat radiaton to reach the top of the cake, but will still let convection heat do its work.

Don't take it out of the pan now, let it cool for some minutes.
While it cools down, we prepare the sugar cinamon glaze

Step 10: Glazing It.

As an alternative, you can just put the powdered sugar on top of the cake, but i like it glazed.

Sugar glaze is actually pretty easy to make, if you know how to.

Take 6 teaspoons of hot tap water, yeah only 6.
Add 1/4 teaspoon of powdered cinnamon and your green food color.

Then add some of the powdered sugar. Mix it with a spoon.

Add some more, and mix it with a spoon.

You can get nearly a cup full with the amount of water you got in there.
The consistency we are looking for will be a bit less dense then toothpaste.

Now free that cake, and prepare your table with some paper, because you're about to create a mess.

Spread the glaze with a cooking brush (yes, there are special brushes for that purpose) or kitchen paper.

Let the cake finish cooling down, and then....

Step 11: EAT IT

Yeah, we got it.

You got some good tasting cake in front of you.

I'm sorry, i forgot to take picture of the complete glazed cake.

We just ate it, but i saved a piece.

And i got a picture of another one i did some months ago, its not glazed, but you see it better there.