Celebrate Pride Month with these rainbow recipes
|Published
Every June, rainbow flags adorn streets worldwide and lively parades take over entire city blocks.
Celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community, Pride Month marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and the groundbreaking protest for LGBTQ+ rights that took place in New York in the late 1960s.
There are many different ways to support and elevate the queer community during this month. You can buy from queer-owned brands and attend Pride events, which happen all over the world during the month of June and beyond.
But if you’re hosting your own party, here are recipes inspired by Pride’s rainbow flag to help you get into the spirit throughout the month.
Sorghum rainbow salad
Serves: 4
Ingredients
250ml sorghum, soaked overnight, then drained
3 cups water
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1 feta round, crumbled
1 red onion, finely chopped
½ cucumber, chopped
1 cup finely chopped herbs (parsley, chives, dill)
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
In a medium pot, cook the sorghum in the water until soft, about 40 minutes. Drain and leave to cool.
Place the sorghum in a large bowl, along with the tomatoes, feta, onion, cucumber and herbs.
Season well and toss to combine.
Recipe by Mogau Seshoene aka “The Lazy Makoti”.
Rainbow cake
Note: You will need to make this sponge recipe twice (so you will need to double the sponge ingredients below) to make six layers.
Ingredients
For the sponge
225g butter, softened
225g castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 jumbo eggs, at room temperature
225g self-raising flour, sifted
Food colouring – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
For the icing
100g butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup icing sugar, sifted (plus a little more just in case)
4 x 250g cream cheese
Method
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Lightly grease 3 x 20 cm PushPan cake tins and set aside. Cream the softened butter and sugar together using an electric beater or stand mixer until pale and creamy in colour.
Add vanilla extract and eggs, one at a time, making sure you beat in each one before you add the next. Fold in the sifted flour and then divide the mixture into three mixing bowls making sure that the weight of all three mixtures is equal.
Pick three of the colours (remember you’re going to be making the recipe twice to get all six colours) and add a little into each batter bowl, adding more until you are happy with the colour.
Be careful not to add too much colour in the beginning, as you can always add more food colouring to achieve a brighter-coloured cake.
Pour each batter into the three prepared baking tins and place into the oven for about 15 - 20 minutes or until the cake is cooked and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Remove the cakes from the oven and allow them to cool for a couple of minutes in the cake tin before gently pushing them out and carefully placing them on a cooling rack to cool completely.
If the cakes rose with quite a peak in the centre you may want to trim this level with a bread knife. Don’t be disheartened by the dulled outside colour of the cake.
The baked food colouring will look odd but the inside of your cake will be delightfully bright still, rest assured. Repeat this recipe using the remaining three food colour gels to achieve your six-layer rainbow cake.
To make the icing, place the softened butter and vanilla extract into a large mixing bowl and, using an electric beater, cream until smooth.
Add in the sifted icing sugar and beat until well incorporated. Add cream cheese and whisk until smooth.
Taste the cream cheese icing and add more icing sugar if you would prefer a sweeter icing.
To assemble
Smear a little icing onto a cake stand and place the purple-coloured sponge onto the blob of icing. This prevents the cake from sliding around the platter.
You may want to place your cake layers top side down so that the flat “bottom” faces upwards, this also ensures that your layers are even and less tapered.
Then spread a generous amount of icing onto the purple sponge, making sure you spread the icing right to the edge.
Place the blue sponge on top of the iced purple sponge and repeat this icing process followed by green, yellow, orange and, finally, red. Again, don’t fret if your cakes aren’t as bright as you expect them to be – the true colour won’t show on the outside.
Rainbow cake layers
Spread a thin layer of icing all over the cake to secure any loose crumbs on the surface of the cake.
Rainbow cake icing
Refrigerate the cake for 10 minutes to allow the crumb coat to set. With the crumbs now secured, very generously smear the remaining icing all over the sides and top of the cake.
Sprinkle with hundreds and thousands if you want a truly colourful cake or leave plain with the brightly coloured surprise on the inside.
Recipe by Luisa Farelo Hayes.