Rainbow cupey-cakes!

I made these for my friend Paul because I felt bad about not seeing him for basically the whole summer. And to make up for my horrible friendship skills, I made him cupcakes! I ended up giving them to him in front of a whole bunch of people who demanded he share and they all liked them too. Even the strangers that were standing around us! But I don't blame them. These are some seriously tasty cupcakes. This is my new favorite cupcake recipe because the great thing about it is: it's so basic! It is a simple simple simple cupcake that can be altered any which way you want. So here's how to make them into rainbow cakes, but feel free to experiment with different flavors and styles following this basic recipe. I made two batches: one gluten free and one not. I actually thought that the gluten free ones came out better because they had a better texture-of course this is just from looking. Stephen said they tasted the same, so that's awesome too!

Rainbow Cakes

Adapted from Baking Bites

1 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla extract

red, green, yellow, blue food coloring

In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl combine the sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, buttermilk, and vanilla extract. Slowly stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. Then pour the batter into five seperate bowls trying to make them as even as possible. It should be about 1/3 cup in each. Add 1/2 tsp of food coloring to each bowl to make yellow, orange, red, green, and blue. Of course, to make orange you do 1/4 tsp of yellow and red. Stir them really well so that there are no streaks. Feel free to add more food coloring if you want more color!

Starting with the blue, add a spoonful of each color into 10 lined muffin tins. Work from blue-green-yellow-orange-red. I ended up having enough batter to make 11 whole muffins and 1 small one. Don't spread the batter around, just let it fall where it wants, otherwise everything will just run together and you'll end up with mud-puddle cupcakes. Bake at 350F until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Once they're cool, frost them with a basic buttercream frosting. I did it all very pretty and artistic with my mad frosting skills. Here's how to do it: After you make your basic frosting, seperate it into three bowls and add one or two drops of food coloring. Do whatever colors you like; I went with red, blue, and green.

Then get a piping bag, or in my case a ziplock bag, and put the frosting in in sections. By this I mean, spread the red frosting into 1 third of the bag then the blue in another third, then the green in the other third. Here's a diagram because I'm tired and I can't think of another way of explaining it. Looking down on the top of the piping bag:

Then just pipe the frosting in a spiral to make it look beautiful!

XOXO

Natalie