I’ve had rainbow cupcakes on my list to make for several months now. Saturday we had a hoedown at our barn (hay ride with the horses, square dancing, bonfire, and lots of food!) and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to make some rainbow cupcakes. An added bonus was that I had Mom to wash dishes for me! 😉 Even so, I decided to use a cake mix to save time and dishes–don’t judge–they were still good, but if you are anti-cake mix you could easily use any white or yellow cake recipe you wanted (like this one). I thought they were super cute and would be perfect for a little kid’s birthday party. I topped mine with a simple vanilla buttercream but some rainbow sprinkles on top would have been nice too. I may have an obsession with rainbows (remember these Rainbow Sugar Cookies?), but what can I say? They are just so cute! And since you will have the food coloring gel now, why not make both? Enjoy!
Rainbow Cupcakes
1 white cake mix
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup oil
food coloring (if you want your colors to be bright you need to use gel-I used these)
1. Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Mix with hand mixer at low speed for 30 seconds. Increase speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes.
2. Divide batter into 6 different bowls (more or less depending on how many colors you want). A kitchen scale is the easiest way to get equal amounts in each bowl, but if you don’t have one you could just measure.
3. If you want your cupcakes to be layered more like the stripes of a rainbow, put each colored batter into a ziploc bag or piping bag so you can have more control over where the batter goes. If you want them to look more like a rainbow snow-cone, then you can just use spoons (which is what I did).
4. Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners. Starting with one color divide the batter evenly among the 24 cups. If you have 6 colors, this will only be about 1-2 tsp per cup. Repeat with remaining colors.
5. Bake according to package directions.
6. I topped mine with this simple vanilla buttercream.
