Rainbow Birthday Cupcakes
Let me preface this by saying that I was so ready to make a rainbow cake, but then I decided that it seemed like a lot of work and also, we don’t have a cake form.
The idea behind this is super easy, but it took me a lot longer than I thought it would. So if you can get one person to help, it’ll go so much faster.
For Michael’s birthday I wanted to bake something special. I wanted it to be pretty, so I did some googling and found a recipe for a rainbow cake, which lead to a recipe for rainbow cupcakes.
I didn’t end up making the cream topping because we went to a restaurant and I didn’t think the cream would still be good by the end of dinner, so I just dusted the cupcakes with icing sugar.
Ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes)
Cake mix:
- 130g soft butter (not liquid)
- 130g sugar
- 2 small eggs (room temperature)
- 1 packet vanilla sugar
- 250g flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
- 80 ml milk (room temperature)
- food colouring suitable for baking (purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red – if you can’t find purple and orange, just get the rest and mix a little blue + red = purple and yellow + a little red = orange)
Topping
- 200 ml whipped cream
- 2-3 teaspoons icing sugar
- optional sprinkles, etc for decoration
Method
1. Mix the softened butter with the sugar and vanilla sugar until it’s creamy.
2. Mix the eggs into the mixture.
3. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl.
4. Alternate mixing the flour mixture and the milk into the mixture.
6 colours of dough
5. Once the dough is smooth, separate it evenly into 6 small bowls. These bowls of mixture then need to be coloured according to the rainbow.
6. Using a teaspoon, put one teaspoon of each colour into the cupcake forms. Start with purple, then add blue, green, yellow, orange and then red. Flatten each layer as you go, not forgetting to get the colour all the way to the edges. Once you start to put on the red layer, preheat the oven to 180°C.
First ‘purple’ – turned out darker than this
Then blue
Green, then yellow
And finally, orange and then red
7. Put the cupcakes in the oven for 12-15 minutes (fan-forced).
8. Test if the cupcakes are ready by doing a poke test with a skewer. If the skewer comes out clean, the cupcakes are ready. Let them cool completely on a cooling rack.
Topping
Cream – Beat the cream until it becomes firm, and then use a piping bag to decorate the cupcakes. The optional sprinkles can now also be added.
Icing Sugar – using a sieve, sprinkle icing sugar evenly on the cupcakes.
And voila! A rainbow cupcake.
KOKSTARS 