a collection of rainbow foods

Step 1: Prepare a standard baked vanilla cheesecake recipe. Line two greased and papered cake tins with a crushed Oreo + butter crumb base.

Step 2: Split the cheesecake batter to make 9 colours (6 rainbow bands + the trans flag) using gel food dyes. Pour into the center of the cake one after the other to create rings.

Step 3: Bake. Allow to cool completely in the oven (to prevent cracking or splitting between the rings), then transfer to the fridge until chilled.

Step 3.5: Regret using Oreos since they behaved weirdly in the oven. Resolve to use regular chocolate cookies + blue food gel for a dark base next time.

Step 4: Trim crust and top until roughly level.

Step 4.5: Continue to regret using Oreos as the weird crumb crust made a mess. Do some repair work on the crusts.

Step 5: Create a black tinted dark chocolate ganache by mixing 450g dark chocolate + 125mL cream + 5-8 drops of blue gel food dye. Place some ganache on the serving plates to hold the cakes in place. Ice the cakes, using alternating treatment with a cake spatula + knife + hot spoon + the fridge to level out and shape neat sides + edges.

Step 6: Spray chilled cakes with silver luster dust. Use a pastry brush to spread out any clumps.

Step 7: Make vanilla cream-cheese frosting. Split and dye into 6 rainbow bands using gel colours, then spread out on clingwrap and roll up into a sausage. Chill.

Step 8: Cut the clingwrap off one end of the frosting-sausage and insert cut-end-down into a piping bag with a big star nozzle. Do some design tests on the less-attractive backup cake before piping around the edge of the main cake.

Step 9: More luster-dust as needed.

Step 10: Serve your theatrical cake using a clean, very sharp knife. Wipe the knife between each slice to help prevent colour-smearing.