As much as I love cooking meals, baking is much more fun for me. I love passing out my baked goods to friends and watching their reaction to the treats. The reaction to these were especially great because, after peeling back the wrapper, you can see that these are not just normal cupcakes; they're rainbow cupcakes!
These are so pretty and cool to make! This is a technically easy recipe — just the same as making any cake.
Personally, I like making everything from scratch, but if you don't have the time and still want to impress your friends, you can make this recipe with cake mix and store-bought frosting, as long as you follow the food-dye instructions.
Ingredients:
—1 cup sugar
—1/2 cup butter
—2 eggs
—3 tsp baking powder
—1/2 tsp salt
—2 cups flour
—1 cup milk
—1 tsp vanilla
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Blend the sugar, butter and eggs in a small bowl.
3. Mix the baking powder, salt and flour in a large bowl.
4. Pour the sugar mixture into the baking powder mixture.
5. Add 1 cup milk and 1 tsp vanilla.
6. Evenly separate the mixture into 6 bowls.
7. Using food coloring, dye bowl a different color of the rainbow red, orange, yellow, green, blue or purple (on the back of the food coloring packages they tell you how to make each color, so you can make cool colors like turquoise or just be creative and experiment).
8. Line cupcake sheets with cupcake liners (I made around 24 normal sized cupcakes and four big cupcakes). Using spoons, layer each color starting from either red or purple and moving up.
This part is really fun because you can really do whatever you want. Rainbow order is really pretty, but really any color combo looks good. Also, if you put the colors in, you can swirl the batter with a toothpick and create patterns too!
9. Cook cupcakes for 15-20 minutes in the oven. Check with a toothpick to see if they're ready!
While they were baking, make the frosting.
Buttermilk Frosting
Ingredients:
—1 c. butter
—1 tsp vanilla extract
—4 c. Confectioners sugar, sifted -2 Tbsp. Lowfat milk.
Directions:
1. In a medium bowl, mix together butter, vanilla, sugar and milk.
2. Store in fridge until the cupcakes are ready.
3. Frost and then ENJOY!
I left the vanilla frosting white so it would contrast with the rainbow cupcakes, but you can use the food dye from before and make the frosting whatever color (or colors) you want. This is such a fun project because the cupcakes turn out looking great regardless, and these cupcakes definitely taste as good as they look!
