Rainbow Cupcakes

I have been on hiatus for a few days.  My computer got a nasty flu and had to be fixed. In the process I had lost a lot of photos. I was finally able to get the computer up and running again and slowly installing all of our software.  Now that my camera is ready to go again I bring the most awesomess cupcakes around.

These babies are all over the web in not only cupcake form but in tall towering cake form ( I plan to make one of those someday).  These are a cross between rainbow and tie dye.  I had intended to make buttercream frosting but as it turns out this morning I was out of butter.  So I opted for cream cheese frosting, which was a little runnier than I was hoping for and ended up with a neat tie dye affect.  I made these for my beautiful baby girl's class today, who turned 4.  Where does the time go?  Seems like she was just learning to walk yesterday.

Rainbow Cupcakes

adapted from Baking Bites

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

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

Quick Buttercream Frosting

In a large bowl, beat together butter, milk and vanilla.  Gradually add in the powdered sugar until frosting reaches a thick, spreadable consistency. 

For Rainbow effect, divide frosting into 5 bowls, adding food coloring to each bowl like you did above.  In a frosting bag, with the tip of your choice, layer the frosting in the bag and pipe each cupcakes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 Oz Cream Cheese, Room Temperature

3 Tbsp Milk

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

~ 3 Cups Powdered Sugar

Beat together cream cheese, milk and vanilla.  Gradually add in the powdered sugar until frosting is desired consistency.  Color frosting as directed above.






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