What Frosting Goes Well With Italian Rainbow Cookie Cake? Recipe Questions

Q: Is there a type of frosting that will go well with a rainbow cookie cake without chocolate?

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Editor: While chocolate is traditional for this Italian confection, there's definitely no reason you can't play around with other kinds! A simple buttercream frosting would be quite nice, or given how sweet this cake already is, even a quick sugar glaze would go well.

• Italian Rainbow Cookie Cake from Bon Appétit
• Recipe: Basic Cooked Buttercream Frosting
• How to Make a Quick Sugar Icing

Readers, what other frostings do you suggest?

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Related: How to Frost a Layer Cake

(Image: Romulo Yanes/Bon Appétit )

Categories: Advice, Main, Dessert, Discussion, Italian, Questions, Recipe Questions, Sweets

Posted by Emma Christensen

Emma is the recipe editor for The Kitchn and the author of "True Brews: How to Craft Fermented Cider, Beer, Wine, Sake, Soda, Mead, Kefir, and Kombucha at Home," available in bookstores nationwide May 14, 2013.
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Comments (4)

You could use white chocolate to make a white chocolate ganache or coating. Also good would be any almond-based or -flavored frosting. (Or very thinly-rolled marzipan as just a top layer, with undecorated sides?) Along the lines of a glaze, you could do an apricot glaze: just mix some apricot jam with enough water to make it spreadable, then spread it over the top.

I definitely like the idea of playing w/the existing filling in the cake (trad. raspberry & apricot) as a glaze. Or how about a lemon glaze? Or even just powdered sugar? That would be nice, too. My favorite cake in the world is a pistachio almond cake, so since the rainbow cake is also (I assume?) almond, perhaps a pistachio or almond cream would be nice, too.

I love this - I make rainbow cookies at Christmastime... cake sounds even better.

I adore egg white frostings---Seven Minute Frosting, for example. Dead easy to prepare, and just looks gorgeous on a cake. Low fat, too. Can be tinted, flavored, et cetera.

I recently made a rainbow cake like this and went for a less sweet frosting. Just a simple whipped cream frosting using heavy whipping cream, a pinch of sugar and hint of almond extract. With the sweetness of the cake, this whipped cream was a nice change.