Taste the Rainbow

7th February saw the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. While they should really be all about the sports and celebrating the astonishing achievements of humans in their chosen fields, the Olympics have often found themselves bogged down in politics, and these Games in particular have been caught up in a huge amount of controversy surrounding Russia’s attitude towards and treatment of gay people.

Subsequently there have been protests, boycotts, speeches and a number of small but nonetheless high-profile acts of solidarity, such as companies altering their logos to incorporate rainbows, including Channel 4, The Guardian and Google with one of its famous ‘Google doodles’. 

 

I decided to do my bit in what felt like the most appropriate way - by baking some rainbow cakes. In tins. The idea is simple - first, make up a basic pale cake batter.

Divide the mixture into seven bowls and add food colourings to give red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet batches (or just do what I did and go for six, as indigo and violet layers of cake are probably going to be pretty indistinguishable when baked).

Grease some clean, empty tins (I used the 300g-size vegetable tins from my Burns Night feast) and put a spoonful of each colour of cake mixture into each, before baking at 180 degrees for about half an hour.

Allow to cool, turn out the cakes, and try to disguise your disappointment at how much of a mish-mash they look.

But then cut into them and gasp at their beautifully coloured cross-section!

Enjoy with a cup of tea in front of the BBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics with Clare Balding, and all will be well with the world. Albeit briefly.

"The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play." - the Olympic Charter