Candy Corn Cake

I have been inspired by candy corn this fall, and I wanted to try and translate that into a cake for the Autumn season.   This can be used for Halloween or even Thanksgiving to add some whimsy to your entertaining table.

2 cups butter, softened
1 2/3 cups sugar
5 eggs
1.5 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cups buttermilk
1 tbsp. vanilla-bean paste
4 cups cake flour
orange food coloring
yellow food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare three 9" cake pans by spraying them with Bak-klene - set aside.

In the work bowl of your mixer place the butter and sugar.  Beat on high, scraping the bowl if necessary until ingredients are creamed.  Add eggs, baking powder, soda, salt and buttermilk - mix on medium until combined and any lumps are small.  Add vanilla-bean paste and cake flour.  Beat ingredients on low, slowly gearing up to medium-high - beating the ingredients until the batter is creamy and you see very little lumps.  This process should take 1-2 minutes at most.

Using a scoop, divide the batter into one of the prepared pans and two appropriately-sized mixing bowls.  Take your orange and yellow food coloring and add them to one of each of the mixing bowls and color the one bowl of batter yellow and one bowl of batter orange - using a fork or whisk to combine the batter and fully color it.  Use a clean spatula to scrape each of the colors into their own separate 9" round, spreading the batter around to ensure it bakes evenly.  Repeat with other two pans.

Place into preheated oven and bake for 25-35 minutes, OR until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Allow to cool for roughly ten minutes, then invert cakes onto cooling rack to completely cool.

This cake uses one whole batch of my vanilla-bean buttercream icing.  I use a large, star tip to pipe the colors onto the top of the cake.  Chill overnight and remove from the refrigerator shortly before you are to serve it.