How to make a bright and bold tie dyed cake, frosted with creamy buttercream frosting. From the outside it looks like a regular vanilla cake, but inside it's anything but!
We called this cake a “surprise” cake because on the outside it looks like a plain white cake, but when you cut out a slice, you immediately see that the cake is brimming with bright, bold colors.
Tie Dyed Cake With Buttercream Frosting
Tips and Tricks
You can use any cake recipe you'd like. I like using boxed cake mixes and doctoring them up. Have you tried adding 1 c. of sour cream to your cake batter? It's an easy way to create a super moist cake! Just mix it into your batter.
To get the vivid colors I recommend using concentrated gel food coloring. Divide the batter into 6 bowls and color each bowl any color you'd like.
How to get the tie dyed effect with your batter: Start by pouring ¾ of a bowl into the bottom of a prepared cake pan. Then add less of the second color, even less of the third color, and so on until you only add a tiny bit of the 6th color. Then repeat for the second cake starting with the last color that you used for the first cake.
Example:
My first pan: a lot of red, less orange, less yellow, less green, less blue, then a small amount of purple.
My second pan: a lot of purple, less blue, less green, less yellow, less orange, then a small amount of red.
Tie Dyed Cake With Buttercream Frosting
Equipment
- 2 (9") cake pans
- small bowls to divide batter
- hand or electric mixer
- baking spray or shortening to grease pans
Ingredients
Cake
- 1 boxed cake mix plus eggs and oil needed to make it
- Food Coloring
- sprinkles
Frosting
- ½ cup solid vegetable shortening
- ½ cup 1 stick butter, softened
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 4 cups powdered sugar approximately 1 lb.
- 2 tablespoons milk
Instructions
- Make cake batter according to directions on the box.
- Divide batter into 6 bowls and tint each bowl a different color with food coloring.
- Grease 2 9-inch cake pans.
- Pour ¾ of a bowl of colored cake batter into the bottom of one cake pan. Then pour a litle less of the second color, even less of the third color, and so on until you've added just a small amount of the 6th color.
- Pour batter directly into the center of the pan and it will spread out on its own. The reason for this is to create a larger solid base for the first batter color in each pan.
- Repeat process for the second pan, this time starting with the color that you ended with in the first pan. Pour the rest of that bowl as your base, then continue backwads until you finish witht the color that you started with in the first pan.
- Bake at according to the cake mix packaging. Let cool 5-10 minutes then remove from pans to a cooling rack.
Frosting
- In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add more milk until you reach desired consistency. Makes 3 cups.
- Frost cake and add sprinkles.
Notes
Nutrition
3 More Cake Recipes To Try!
Moist and Delicious Carrot Cake
Buckeye Peanut Butter and Chocolate Sheet Cake
This is a refresh of a post originally shared in 2014.
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