Tie-Dye Donut Cake

In stores tie-dye cakes are everywhere it seems. Boxes and boxes of dyed cake and tubs of dyed icing as far as the eye can see (ok, maybe not that much, but it still seems like there's a ton of it!). Two friends of mine and I were celebrating all three of our birthdays together so, of course, I decided to make a cake. After much debate as to what kind, I figured, "Why not give the whole tie-dye thing a go using my own custom colors and dying everything myself?" Doing it myself, rather than getting one of the kits, also meant I got to pick the colors.

Cake

For this cake, I cheated and used a box of butter cake mix, stirred it all up, then pulled out the box of food dye. I wanted deep green, medium orange, indigo blue and dark purple--my friends', A's and my favorite colors. 

1. I divided the batter up into four bowls, with one having more than the others.

2. Following the directions on the box of dye, I added the appropriate drops to each bowl until I had deep, rich colors. The bowl with the most batter was the purple. 

3. Once that was done, I poured the purple into the bottom of a well-greased bundt pan (hence the round shape), since there was the most of that. 

4. Next, I made  a ring of the blue, then a ring of green, and lastly the orange. The rings didn't totally cover one another and weren't overly neat as I wanted it to be a tie-dye rather than rainbow look. 

5. Lastly, into the oven it went, baked per the directions on the box. 

6.Once the was done baking, I let it cool on a rack for about an hour then flipped it out onto the rack to cool completely. An hour or so later, it was nice and cool so onto the wood tray it went! 

Note: It didn't have to be a bundt pan, I just wanted a different shape than what I usually do. Square, round, 9x13 or even cupcakes work as well.

Frosting

Now, for the frosting fun. I wanted to do a mish-mash of colors but not exactly the same as inside. Yellow, green, blue and red were the final choices. 

1. The frosting (two regular size tubs) went into five new bowls which I then dyed until I got the shades I wanted. One bowl was left without dye for the white base which allowed the colors to pop more. Knowing the blue and red would take the most, I put more frosting in those bowls. 

2. Once everything was dyed, with a knife I put the yellow around the inside, then green, then did a big loop of blue, then red. 

3. Finally, the fun! With my handy-dandy pastry brush (mine is silicone and awesome for some many things) I smeared the colors together, being careful to spread the colors around but not turn them into mud by mixing them too much. I did this until I liked the pattern that had been made (I kept playing with it trying to get it "perfect" and had to stop myself before I had mud! :) ) 

4.To top it off, I tipped on some clear  sprinkles. It turned out great and the inside was just as awesome, each slice different from the last with a new beautiful color array. 

Voila! Tye-dye donut cake! I forgot to get shots of the inside (it was awesome), but got plenty of the outside. 

Yes, it tasted as good as it looked! It also didn't dye everything it touched (like our mouths!) as many store-bought kits do since I could control the amount of dye that went in.