Rainbow Cupcakes

These cupcakes are from scratch, no cake mixes involved. I have adapted a recipe from bakingbites.com. My daughter wanted to make some rainbow cupcakes for a friend who was hit by a car. She had made them before using a cake mix & I wasn't really happy with the end result. This is what we came up with. You can use paper liners, silicone cupcake liners or grease your muffin tins. If you use silicone liners or grease your tins the colours show very nicely. The cupcakes are not too sweet & the olive oil makes them nice & moist. Frost with plain buttercream, cream cheese frosting or strawberry cream frosting. Decorate with sprinkles if desired. I ended up with 24 cupcakes & 1 small loaf when I made these. I might try using frozen fruit juice concentrates to colour the batter another time to see if it is possible to avoid using food colouring.

• Ready In: 45 mins
• Serves: 26
• Yields: 26 cupcakes

Ingredients

• Cupcakes

• 2  cups flour
• 1  tablespoon baking powder
• 1⁄4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
• 1  cup sugar
• 4  eggs
• 1  cup olive oil
• 1  cup buttermilk
• 1  tablespoon vanilla
•  liquid  food coloring

• Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

• 1  tablespoon vanilla
• 1⁄2 cup butter
• 3  tablespoons heavy cream
• 3  cups icing sugar (confectioners or powdered)
•  candy sprinkles, for decorating

Directions

1. Cupcakes:
2. Grease muffin tins, or line with paper or silicone cupcake liners.
3. Whisk flour, salt, baking powder & baking soda together.
4. Whisk eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk & vanilla together in a separate bowl.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients & whisk to combine.
6. Divide batter into 6 dishes, using 3/4 c batter per dish.
7. Add colour to each of the dishes as follows, & stir well to mix.
8. purple - 3 drops red food colour & 2 drops blue food colour,.
9. blue - 6 drops blue,.
10. green - 6 drops green,.
11. yellow - 6 drops yellow,.
12. orange - 6 drops yellow & 2 drops red,.
13. red - 9 drops red.
14. Starting with purple, add 1 generous teaspoon to each prepared cupcake liner. Then move on to the blue & top with 1 teaspoon of blue. continue on like this for each colour in the order given above. You can either add the colours one on top of the other & they will form layers, or you can place spoonfuls around the edge of the cupcake liner & you will get a blocky colour effect. Don't try to spread the batter or you will end up blending the colours together.
15. Bake at 350 for 15 - 20 minutes. If you are using a convection oven lower your temperature to 325 & bake for the same amount of time. Cool on wire rack. If you have used silicone liners, remove the cupcakes from the liners after about 10 minutes or they will create to much moisture.
16. Vanilla Buttercream Frosting:
17. Beat butter, vanilla & cream until light & fluffy.
18. Beat in icing sugar, 1 cup at a time.
19. Beat well after last cup of icing sugar.
20. Spread or pipe frosting on cooled cupcakes.
21. Top with candy sprinkles (if using) after each cupcake before frosting has a chance to set up.