Obviously with the amount of rainbow cakes I have in my arsenal, I’m a sucker for rainbows. I didn’t know that I loved leopard print until I started on this cake.
Sure, like many women, I have a pair of leopard print flats in my shoe closet (but they hurt my feet so they rarely see the light of day) but I basically bought them because they were on clearance, not because I liked them.
After working on this cake for a while (it takes a bit of practice to get the circles looking like spots), and staring at endless screens of leopards, I started to love leopards. This is isn’t the first time I’ve found new love through cake, it also happened when I did a zebra cake. Maybe I secretly have a love for wild animals. Or maybe I should just pay more attention to the natural beauty of things in my surroundings. Not that zebra’s and leopards are in my local surroundings, but you know what I mean.
You can recreate this same type of cake using a different shaped pan by following the outline of the cake pan, the same way that I do in the video. To get the bright, vibrant colours, I used Americolor gel pastes, and I’ve listed the names of each of the colours in the recipe ingredients.
I don’t recommend using a cake mix from a box, unless it is a pound cake mix, as you need a heavy, thick cake to ensure that the spots do not spread when you are piping them. My homemade vanilla cake recipe is what I used, and as you can see, it worked perfectly.
Let me know if you try this cake out in the comments!
Rainbow Leopard Cake
Ingredients:
- 6 cups vanilla cake batter
- 6 cups vanilla buttercream
- Gel paste (deep pink, sky blue, yellow, orange, regal purple, super black)
- Divide vanilla cake batter into the following amounts: 4 cups (no colour), 1 cup (black), 1/4-1/2 cups per bowl (x 5 for each colour). Colour batter as required and put batter into piping bags.
- Into a greased 8″ round cake pan, place 1/2 cup of vanilla cake batter into the bottom of the pan, and use an offset spatula to smooth covering the entire bottom.
- Using the black cake batter, pipe 5 circles on top of the cake batter, starting about 1/2″ from the edge of the pan, and working towards the center.
- With the coloured cake batter, pipe directly over top of the black line. Use one colour per circle.
- Using the black cake batter, go back over the coloured lines.
- With plain vanilla batter in a piping bag, fill empty spaces between circles with batter. Also cover the circles with cake batter.
- Bake cake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Repeat steps 1-7, two more times so that there are three layers of cake. Cool each layer completely.
- Once cooled, stack cakes and layer with a thin layer of buttercream.
- Dived and colour remaining vanilla buttercream with gel paste and place into piping bags. Place the black buttercream in a piping bag fitted with a #10 tip.
- Pipe the coloured buttercream on to the side of the cake making thick lines of icing.
- Using an icing scraper or flat spatula, “wipe” buttercream off the side of the cake, smoothing it flat. Repeat for the top of the cake.
- Allow buttercream to crust, and then pipe flat black erratic circles for the leopard spots.
- Keep cake refrigerated until ready to serve. Cake is best consumed within 2-3 days.
Can I freeze this for a couple days? My daughter has planned her whole birthday around this cake!!
But the party is Saturday. I work late Thursday and Friday. Can I make it Wednesday? Will it be good or should I freeze it or best to stay up late Friday?? What about the buttercream?? Thanks!
Yes you can freeze it. Wrap it in plastic wrap first and you can do it a few months ahead even!
I made this cake for my boyfriend’s daughters and they loved it! It took me a while though because I’m not a pro but I enjoyed doing it 🙂
Plus, I really like the vanilla cake recipe as well as the buttercream recipe.
It was not my first cake from you as I made the Zebra cake last year.
Thanks for sharing your passion with us! It has become mine for me as well 🙂
This is super cute!! Would I do it the same way if I wanted to make a regular rectangular sheet cake instead of a round cake?
Yep!
I love this cake! Planning on trying this for me and my twins 18th birthday. I am an okay baker but have never tried any layer cakes before. Any hints or tricks that might help me to make this successfully?
I would love to make this cake just wondering can this be done with 2 layers instead of 3 layers
yes
I love this idea but is there anyway I could get the cake batter recipe?
It’s linked in the post.
I would love to have one of those revolving cake stands for decorating; can you recommend a brand? Thanks!
Im making this recipe this friday and is this all the ingredients for this recipe please get back to me quick
My little one is allergic to food coloring, but she would love this cake. Do you have any ideas of the best way to naturally make coloring? Or have an idea of where to start looking? This cake is so cool!
Oh my gosh…that’s unfortunate! I’m sure a google search would give you lots of options and ideas for ways to go about doing it naturally. You won’t get the vibrant colours, but I”m sure it will still look great.
Hi,I have plans to make this cake for my daughter and the only thing I don’t have is the americolor gel paste and it is not sold near me ,so my question is what colorings would work best in place of americolor gel I need to know soon by the first thanks!
You can try Wilton, or any other brand of gel. If you can’t find gel paste, you can use food colouring found in grocery stores, but the colours won’t be as bright. Good luck.
Thank you so much,I will have to try Wilton gel colors and I am so excited to make this cake! I have one other question and that would be how much cake batter should I make for a 6in. Cake?
Is there a way to make this a sheet cake? The party I’m entertaining has 8 kids and 6 adults and my daughter has her heart set on a leopard inside cake like this. Any advice?!
If you want to do this technique with a sheet cake, instead of piping circles, pipe rectangles following the edges of the pan. I haven’t tried that exactly, but I imagine it would work the same. Each cut should show the inside the same way the round cake does.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to me Jenn! I’m excited to try this out. Better do a run through just to see though- I’ll let you know how it goes 🙂
Cute idea- I just wish I had read the comments before starting. Really stinks when you have to go back and make another batch of cake because someone didn’t do the math! I was trying so hard to get every last bit of the batter to make it work & it came up extremely short. Ya need to get that recipe fixed.
Sorry to hear you had some problems with this….it’s stated that the vanilla cake recipe only makes 4 cups, but perhaps I needed to be more explicit in that.
I am planning to make this cake but I noticed something. The recipe for your white cake makes 4 cups of batter, whereas the instructions for the Leopard cake requires 6 cups of batter. Do I need to make 2 batches of batter?
You will need to make a recipe and a half. So 1.5 batches of this cake batter.
I made two batches and used the majority of it. The cake turned out great! Great idea!
Do you need recipe and half foe the buttercream aswell
I usually use a lot of buttercream, so the amount is up to you. You can double it if you like lots, or if you think you won’t use very much, you could try 1.5 batches.
How many cups does your vanilla batter make, also if not 6 cups like you suggest how much would I need to make this cake?
As stated in the vanilla cake recipe, it makes 4 cups so you will need 1.5 the amount of the cake batter. Have fun!
hello,
I love watching your channel, lots of good creations for cakes, i have been asked to make a harley Davidson cake for a client or a friend of mines dad.
I have never does this before any tips or advise.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Keep up the good work.
😉
Hello! 🙂 Can this be made with boxed cake mix? Or would the density or anything be off?
Thanks! 🙂
The batter needs to be thick to maintain it’s shape, so if it was a pound cake mix or heavy one, it might work for you. Good luck!
Love this idea. Thank you for sharing. My ten year old is learning to bake cakes and she lives watching you. This is our next cake to make. Wish her luck. Thanks again
Have fun with it!
That is so awesome. I wish I was that talented. Maybe one day I will try and make something like this.
Can you do a swimming pool cake next?