Rainbow Cupcakes Recipe – Perfect for a childrens party!

A multi coloured vanilla cupcake perfect for brightening up your day!…

If you saw my post last week, you would know that I was asked to bake some cakes for a bake sale organised by 10 year old Pippa and Olivia in aid of the Dogs Trust.

Knowing that there would be a fair few children there I wanted to make something that appealed to them. What better than a multi coloured cupcake topped with sugar?!

When I arrived at the sale everyone said how great they looked. And they sold well too. It was great looking round at all the children to see their faces when they bit into – seeing all the colours and then showing everyone their magical cake. (And you could tell who had eaten them due to the blue tongues!)

Anyway, these would be great for a children’s party and for vanilla cupcakes, tasted pretty good too!

A note on food colouring: Before I went on a cake decorating course a while ago, I would just have used the food colourings in the supermarkets. I have since learnt that these can alter the icing mix due to them being a liquid, and they are not very strong. For these cakes I used colour pastes for all the colours apart from Pink as I didn’t have this colour. I did have a pink liquid colouring so I used this instead. The part of the cake that doesn’t look like it has any colour in is the pink part. So you can see that it is definitely worth investing in the gel.

As I was baking for a sale I made more than I usually would. This recipe made 20 cupcakes but you can half it etc if you want to make less.

[callout title=Ingredients for the sponge:]

• 375g unsalted butter – at room temperature
• 375g caster sugar
• 4 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (use a good quality one as it’s a vanilla recipe. I used Taylor & Colledge vanilla bean extract from Waitrose)
• 6 eggs – at room temperature
• 375g self raising flour – sifted
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 9 tbsp milk

[/callout]

Method for making the cake:

• Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a muffin tray with paper cases
• Sift together the flour and balking powder – leave to the side
• Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy – this will take a few minutes
• Mix in the eggs one at a time
• Add the flour mixture and mix until well incorporated
• Add the milk
• Scoop the batter evenly into 6 bowls (or how ever many different colours you would like to use)
• Mix food colouring (I prefer the Wilton Colour Pastes as they give a much deeper colour)
• Spoon half a teaspoon of each colour into the cases (Don’t put too much of each colour in or you will have an overflowing cupcake by the end!)
• Bake for 25 minutes

[callout title=Ingredients for the buttercream:]

• 250g unsalted butter – at room temperature
• 500g icing sugar – sifted
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp milk

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Method for making the frosting:

• Cream the butter until light and fluffy – this will take a good few minutes
• Add the icing sugar slowly and mix on a low speed
• Beat in the vanilla and milk

For mine, I took 3/4 of the batch of buttercream and coloured it blue and spread it over the cakes once cooled. My kitchen was cold so it wasn’t spreading very evenly so I used a warmed knife to create the smooth finish. Other people have just used icing and sugar and water for this part of the decoration, but I think frosting has a much nicer taste to it.

I then piped some ‘clouds’ on either side using a piping bag, but these can easily just be placed on using a spoon. I cut the sweet strips down to size and placed them in the clouds to create the final look.

The decoration did take a little while, but it felt worth it after the compliments they recieved.

Well done to Pippa and Olivia for organising such a great event.