Rainbow Cake

Over Christmas week one of our many projects included baking individual rainbow cakes in jars. Not a baker in any sense of the word, the idea both intrigued me and terrified me. I had images of ten children flinging eggs and flour all over my kitchen and batter oozing onto the floor into puddles that the kids would gleefully jump and splash in, much like an irresistible springtime mud puddle. Thankfully, however, none of these things happened and my kids were receptive to direction, excited by the baking challenge and satisfied with the tasty results.

Here's how we did it:
1.  Mix up two white cake mixes according to the    directions. We sat at the kitchen table and passed the mixing bowl around letting each child put in an ingredient. When everything was added they all took a turn holding the mixer with or without assistance, depending on their age.
2.  Then we divided the batter into four different bowls and working in teams (oldest with youngest) we added a different food color into each bowl and stirred it up.

3. Then everyone got a pint canning jar and chose any three colors to fill their jar to the halfway mark. ( Madi put a small line of tape on the jars earlier in the day. Which we removed before baking.)
4. Then we baked at 325 for about 40 minutes. (Two cake mixes makes twelve pint sized jars)
5.  After the jars were completely cooled we put the lids on and wrote each child's name on the jar they baked and let them decorate the outside of the jars with holiday stickers left over from all of our holiday crafts and projects. 

It was such a fun activity. The kids got to experience taking turns in a large group project, and there was plenty of opportunity for individual decisions.