My youngest daughter, Colby, turned 1 last week! It’s beyond me how she is growing so fast and the whole baby stage is slowly coming to a close and will be behind me long before I’m ready for it to be over. What fun would a birthday be without some cake? I wanted Colby to dig into her own birthday treat but wanted to save myself the work of baking two cakes, so I figured my best bet would be cupcakes.
Since it was just a small family celebration, we didn’t do a big themed party with tons of decorations to celebrate. I didn’t have any theme to help inspire me, I tried thinking up all of the fun cupcake ideas I could using a boxed cake mix. At last, inspired by the rainbow layer cake I made for my own birthday, I settled on making rainbow cupcakes with buttercream frosting.
While the rainbow layer cake was a labor of love, these rainbow cupcakes weren’t nearly as labor intensive. Once again by making cupcakes from a cake mix, this saved me extra time, which I am always in short supply of. Another fun thing about these cupcakes is that while I layered the different colors of cake batter, there was nothing to keep them separated so the result is almost tie-dye effect for something totally out of the ordinary!
Rainbow Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting
Rainbow Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients
Rainbow Cupcakes:
- 1 box white cake mix I used Betty Crocker
- 3 eggs
- 1/3 c. canola or vegetable oil
- 1.25 c. water
- Wilton Gel Food Coloring
Buttercream Frosting:
- 1 c. unsalted butter 2 sticks, room temperature
- 4 Tbsp. milk
- 4 tsp. clear vanilla extract
- 4 c. powdered sugar
- If you plan on spreading your frosting instead of piping it on you can half this recipe. The cupcakes in the pictures have a healthy amount of frosting on them.
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees, then lightly spray or line cupcake pans and set aside.
- Mix cake mix, oil, water, and eggs together with electric mixer for approximately 2 minutes.
- As best as you can, try to evenly divide the batter amongst six, small bowls.
- Using a toothpick, use small amounts of Wilton gel food coloring at a time until you achieve your desired color.
- This is the tricky part. Once all batters are colored to your liking, begin evenly distributing your batter among the prepared cupcake pans.
- Continue dividing the batter in the order you want your rainbow to appear.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes and allow to cool completely.
- While cupcakes are cooling, prepare the frosting by mixing all ingredients together using an electric mixer.
- Frost your cupcakes as desired and served. I used a Wilton 5 tip on the cupcakes in the front of the picture and a Wilton 1M tip on the back cupcakes.
