Rainbow Cupcakes

This is not an original idea, but it went along with the Care Bears party theme. I used this photo for inspiration. There are lots of variations all over the internet, but here is how I made these cupcakes for Mia to take to school on her birthday. I briefly flirted with the idea of making the inside layered with rainbow colors like I had done last March, but I decided that the work I was putting into the outside was more than enough for something that was going to be served to a bunch of kindergarten kids. They looked nice, and they were tasty, too.

1. First, I made a double batch of my favorite white cake recipe, which yielded 28 cupcakes. I made them in rainbow striped cupcake liners which I had gotten at Jo-Ann. (Of course, you can use store-bought cake mix. This is just how I did it.)
2. Next, I made a batch of buttercream frosting. (Again, use store bought if that is your preference, but in my opinion, you cannot beat homemade frosting.) I added 5 drops of neon blue food coloring and mixed it in with my hand mixer, which I had already used to make the frosting. I used an angled spatula to frost my cupcakes.
3. I bought two packages of Airhead Xtremes Sweetly Sour Belts candy from Wal-mart. The flavor is called "Rainbow Berry" and they were about $1.28 a package. (I actually had to go back to buy a second bag after discovering that one bag has only 20 strips, so use this information to plan accordingly.) These come in strips that are about 5" long, and I cut them to about 3" and inserted each end into the frosting. Keeping them longer meant that the rainbows caved in on themselves, and just did not work to make the rainbows I was hoping for. I then saved the extra cuttings for snacking.
4. I made the clouds by putting Cool Whip (left over from the layered rainbow Jell-O cups that I served at the party) into a baggie, snipping off a corner, and piping it onto the frosting.

The Leprechauns Came

Last Friday, I couldn't go to bed until I crossed one last thing off of my to-do list: "Make sure the leprechauns come." Mia had been asking repeatedly when the leprechauns were going to come and bring her gold. Well, I didn't have any gold on hand, and I didn't want to run out in search of those gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins. I decided I needed to make something that would be cool enough to take place of gold. At first I wasn't sure what that could be, and then I remembered chatting with another dance mom on Tuesday who told me about making rainbow cupcakes for her daughter's birthday. It was a good time to give them a try. From the description she had given me on how to make the cupcakes, it sounded like it would take a little time, but wouldn't be too difficult. I didn't have a white cake boxed mix in the house, so I found a white cake recipe and tried it out. And I am so glad I did. This white cake recipe makes a moist, spongy cake that reminded me a sugar cookie, and most importantly in this case, it kept the food coloring nice and vibrant.

{Rainbow Colored Cake Mix}

How I Made My Cupcakes:

After making my white cake mix, I divided it into six bowls. Each bowl had about 3/4 cup cake mix in it. Then I added the food coloring. I used my regular McCormick liquid colors and just adjusted the amounts to reflect one sixth of a cake mix.I lined my muffin tin with silicone cupcake liners. 

Then, I poured a teaspoon of purple tinted cake mix into each cup. I spread it around as best I could. I had a small amount left over, which I saved.

Next came blue. Again, I used about a teaspoon for each except this time I didn't spread it around because I didn't want the colors to blend together.

The next layer is green.

After green comes yellow.

Follow that with orange.

Lastly, I topped them with red. By the end, I had realized that heaping teaspoons were the way to go because it was easier.

I had small amounts of each color remaining after filling my 12 muffin cups so I spread these into a casserole dish and made a small-ish sort of tie-dye cake along with my rainbow cupcakes.

I used Betty Crocker whipped frosting, which I had on hand already and then added star sprinkles for more color. If I hadn't had canned frosting available, I would have made this buttercream. (Honestly, I was glad I didn't need to, though, because it was after midnight before the leprechauns finished up.)

{The top view doesn't really show them to their best advantage.}

When it came to displaying the cupcakes, the leprechauns were kind of tired and running out of ideas, but I figured they would like green diapers best so I stacked them on the table next to the rainbow cupcakes.

These cupcakes turned out well. They were tasty and pretty. Mia was very excited to see that the leprechauns had come, and thankfully, she didn't even notice all of the colorful dirty dishes sitting in the sink. (Hey, I mentioned it was really late, right?)

{These cupcakes are worth the extra effort!}