Rainbow Cupcakes

This is a fun little cupcake I made to take into my son's class at school. They do take a little extra time compared to a regular cupcake but the kids loved them. I already picked up some red, white and blue sprinkles and am planning on doing some red/white/blue patriotic ones for Fourth of July. I confess to using a boxed cake mix, because I knew the rest of the process would take awhile & I was in a hurry because I totally forgot until the night before, but I have included a recipe for basic white cupcakes if you'd rather do homemade. A few things I learned :

1. I would use powder or higher quality food coloring (like Wilton) because it will create brighter colors. I just had to go with what I had because I forgot until Sunday night and was stuck with what I had at home.

2. I tried coloring decorating them with colored frosting and felt like it overwhelmed the cupcakes so I liked the white better.

3. It will look like you are putting a really small amount of each color in but once you get in all they layers it fills them up and you don't want them to overflow.

Rainbow Cupcakes

from Baking Bites

For the Cake:

1 yellow or white cake mix

or

Basic White Cupcakes

1 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla extract

red, yellow, green and blue food colorings (or whatever colors you want to use.

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 10 cups from a 12 cup muffin tin (or line with paper cups).In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, buttermilk and vanilla extract. Pour in dry ingredients and stir until just combined.Divide batter evenly into 5 small bowls; each should have a little more than 1/3 cup batter (approx 6 tbsp or so for each).Add about 1/2 tsp food coloring to each bowl to make red, orange, yellow, green and blue batters. Stir well, so no streaks of plain batter remain. Add additional food coloring if necessary.Starting with the blue batter, add a small spoonful to each of the 10 grease muffin cups (just over 1/2 tbsp in each). Repeat with all remaining colors, working from green to yellow to orange to red, adding each subsequent spoonful on top of the previous color. Do not attempt to spread the layers of color out (as it can cause layers to combined), but allow them to spread on their own.Bake for about 15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.Cool cupcakes on a wire rack before frosting. Makes 10 cupcakes.

For the Frosting

1 can purchased frosting

or

Quick Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

3 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

approx 3 cups confectioners’ sugar

In a large bowl, beat together butter, milk and vanilla. Gradually add in the confectioners sugar until frosting reaches a thick, spreadable consistency. You will probably use 2 1/2-3 cups.Pipe or spread frosting onto cooled cupcakes.