Day 5: Rainbow Cupcakes

I'm currently at my aunt's house helping prepare for my almost 7-year-old cousin's birthday party. His party revolves around Rainbow Dash.
It is kinda going to be the coolest party ever.
I mean, Rainbow Dash is involved.

 Need I say more?

There was a little concern that there might not be enough cake for everyone coming, so to squash this predicament, I decided to make rainbow cupcakes.

The recipe comes from a popular online source, allrecipes.com, so I won't be repeating all the ingredients and instructions, but will still include pictures of my process and tell you some of the things that might need a bit more explaining, or that I did differently.

Please read the recipe so you can follow along! I pinky promise it won't take long.

The Ingredients

Not pictured: salt & baking soda.

Unnecessarily pictured: watermelon and apples in background.

I also ended up using two different kinds of gel dye: the Wilton's pictured above, and some Betty Crocker dye the comes in squeeze tubes my aunt bought. More comments on this later.

The Process

Don't bother preheating the oven at the very beginning. Every single recipe calls for this, but I never start the oven at the get-go; it usually takes longer than the oven needs.

I actually beat the butter first, before adding the sugar. I don't think it made much of a difference, so to save time just go ahead and beat them both together, like the recipe says.

This is what your final product batter should look like; it's not too thick.

Instead of only four colors, I used six: blue, green, yellow, pink, orange, and purple.

To mix the Wilton's dye, I stuck a small coffee mixing spoon into the dye, then stuck it into the batter. I also used these to stir the batter, but because the spoons are so tiny, it didn't work well; go ahead and switch to a regular sized spoon to stir and prevent a bunch of pain and suffering.

The Betty Crocker dye in the squeeze tubes were much more convenient to use, but not nearly as vibrant; it took a lot lot more dye to get decent coloration.

Also realize you can always add more dye, but can't take any out; realize again that constantly adding dye is a pain in the bum. To add slightly more Wilton's dye, I suggest using a toothpick. For the Betty Crocker dye... please tell me I don't need to explain how to use a squeeze tube.

When adding the batter, I decided to add colors randomly (as opposed to placing yellow in all of them, followed by blue, then another color, etc.). This took a TON of effort, and about midway through, I decided that uniqueness was overrated. However, I did really like the end product; all the effort really shows!

If you decide to incorporate the colors randomly like me, I suggest preheating your oven about midway through. If not, begin preheating before you place the batter in the liners.

My cupcakes took exactly 15 minutes to bake.

The Final Product

Some Notes

I made 20 cupcakes. Do note that my liners were closer to 3/4 full rather than 1/2. I like this amount of batter; the cupcakes rose to a really nice, cliche cupcake size!

The prep process will take more than 20 minutes, if only because you have to mix the dye and put the batter in separately. (All recipes seem to lie about how long it actually takes.) I spent much longer, actually.

The end product is pretty bland, and I even actually used a little more vanilla than called for.

This could possibly be remedied with icing, but the visuals of the cupcake are obviously the striking part of this recipe, so why would you want to cover it up with icing?

Also I don't like baked goods to be "remedied" by icing; they should be able to stand on their own.

If I Could Do It Again...

I think I'd take inspiration from Saturday's cake and add 2 teaspoons of almond extract.

I'd also possibly add a little more sugar, between 1/4 and 1/2 cup more.

The Final Verdict

These cupcakes look absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately, that's about it. They're really really bland.

At least the texture is good?

I'd definitely make them again though, with the remedies I suggested above.

These cupcakes a really bright and festive, absolutely great for a child's birthday party!

I think these would be great for any other happy and informal gathering; I think a lot of adults would appreciate their cheery nature. And spreading happiness, well, it's just nice.

Rainbow Dash approves spreading happiness.