Surprising(ly) Easy Ombre Cake

Last week at the Library we had a retirement party for Chris from the Children's Department.  She loves the color purple, and one of her coworkers, Jen, asked me to make her a cake, preferably purple.  When I dropped off the cake in the party room, I could see that Jen was disappointed:  the cake I had made was chocolate with multicolored sprinkles all over.  I wrote on it - "Chris, have a colorful retirement".


But, trooper that she is, Jen said nothing, just oh, that's nice.  Ha, ha, I thought, I won't tell her the inside of the cake is purple ombre:  shades of purple from dark to light.

I left the party, as I had to prepare for teaching my class. Jen burst in to the Meeting Room laughing - You tricked us!  The cake is purple!  It was great, apparently everyone at the party was surprised when they cut the cake. Awesome:  better than the awful Rutgers football loss last night when the quarterback threw a long pass right into the arms of a Louisville defender.


You win some, you lose some.  This presentation, however,  I would call a definite winner.  To make this cake, prepare 2 boxes of white cake mix.  If you want it to be truly white, with the colors added, only use egg whites, not whole eggs.  (I wanted the cake to be a little richer, so I prepared each box cake with 1 stick of melted butter and 3 whole eggs.)  I weighed the cake batter, and divided it into five.  The first I left plain, the next I added a drop or two of purple food dye (the kind in a little jar, made by Wilton, available at any Michael's or just use liquid dye from the food store).  To the next layer, I added more, etc. Easy!  I also used a mix of raspberry preserves and orange marmalade for the filling, and then frosted it with chocolate frosting, and covered it all with tons of sprinkles (Costco!).

I found the inspiration for this cake from one of our new books, Cupcakes and Cashmere, by Emily Schumann.  The book was created from a blog by the same name, and is a fun, quick read with lots of young, trendy info on style, decorating and entertaining. Get it in our Library!



Diane Whitman
Reference Librarian
Lifelong Rutgers Fan