Rainbow Cupcakes!

The following is my promised update on my adventure with making rainbow cupcakes.  I knew that it was going to be a long process, so I decided to use a simple boxed cake mix for the batter so as to save some time.  I used two boxes of Duncan Hines Super Moist White cake mix.  I had some store bought icing at home, and some rainbow sprinkles, as well as a brand new package of food colouring. 

I got to work on mixing the batter, and then set out 7 bowls into which I evenly poured all of the batter using a ladle.  Once I had the batter in the bowls, I got to work on the colourful part.  I used almost the entire package of food colouring and ended up with some very saturated colours.  The red wasn’t quite as saturated as I had hoped for, but I had to use the red dye to make the orange and the purple as well, so I had to use it sparingly.  The dark blue/indigo turned out very well, as did the yellow – I used nearly the whole bottle of yellow for it, minus what I used to make up the orange.  The only colour I had left over was green, as it came in its own bottle and didn’t require me to mix blue and yellow together.

The most time consuming part was putting the batter into each individual cup.  The first tray, I started with violet on the bottom, then indigo, then blue etc through the rainbow.  I was very meticulous with this, taking a spoon and spreading each layer of coloured batter carefully to the edge of each cup.  It took me way too long, and after preparing only 12 cupcakes, my back was in agony from bending over the counter with that spoon!  Needless to say, the second tray was a bit different.  I was not nearly as picky.  I didn’t bother spreading out the batter, nor did I worry if the colours overlapped at all.  Once I had two trays ready, I put them into the oven and went to sit down and rest my back for a bit :P

When they came out of the oven, they looked pretty much the same as each other.  However, I decided to take a closer look, and remove the wrappers on one from each tray.  It is hard to say, because it took so much time to do the first tray, but the second tray turned out much better, in my opinion.  The precise layering of the first tray made the layers come out very straight across.  The haphazard and almost lazy nature with which I threw together the second tray made the cupcakes come look much more whimsical.  With the saturated colours and the different layers just put it in at random, they looked very neat.  Not to mention the wrappers – they had to be the coolest pieces of garbage I have ever seen :D

I had a friend over when I was making these, so when the first round of cupcakes were ready, I went and brought one to him.  Upon returning to the kitchen, I realized how much of a mess I had made.  It is not like there was food dye and flour everywhere, but there were bowls of coloured batter, trays of colourful cupcakes, and two test cupcakes that had been iced, and dipped in rainbow sprinkles with their psychedelic wrappers laying beside them.  It looked a lot like Rainbow Brite had just exploded in my kitchen.  (For those of you who don’t know who Rainbow Brite is… you need to get with the program… either that, or go back in time and be born in the 80’s!)  Cleanup time was very colourful, and I have not had so much fun washing dishes in a long time!

The next day, I brought the cupcakes with me to the zoo and shared them with my friends and their two young children.  The oldest one is a very picky eater, but she LOVES sweets (who wouldn’t though?)  and she ate her rainbow cupcakes very quickly, with excited eyes, then stuck out her tongue and asked us if it had changed colour.  The youngest one, however, was only really interested in the top of the cupcake – you know, the part with the sprinkles and the icing :P

It was very hot that day, so when I got home with the leftovers, they were essentially unpalatable due to their rather melted state of being.  I had some that I left at home as well, but they too were melted.  I think the next time I try this recipe, I will do so in the winter months :P 

Mom – I know you wanted to try some, but they were very much ruined by the heat and had to be thrown away.  I do apologize, and I promise I will do something else to satisfy your sweet tooth. (Apparently it’s not the little ones who are sugar crazy…)

Here are a few pictures from throughout the day:

A rainbow of batter

The lazy ones that turned out really well

Fresh out of the oven

The picky one that turned out "perfect"

All dressed up. Whimsical inside and out

Clean up fun