For my firstborn’s birthday treat, she requested I make rainbow cupcakes. This was a surprise, since she’d chosen brownies with frosting a month ago. Ah well, we’re all entitled to change our minds, right? Sharing your birthday treat in class is one of those awesome-to-be-a-kid moments, and I’m inclined to do almost anything I can possibly pull off to meet a request.
So, yes, rainbow cupcakes. It seemed like it would be pretty easy, conceptually, and they were not hard. They were time-consuming, though!
To go a little easy on myself, I used boxed cake mix. I prepared according to instructions, but before it was mixed enough, I divided the batter into smaller bowls, added gel food coloring, and mixed to incorporate it. I don’t know if it mattered one tiny bit, but I decided that it would be a good idea to add the coloring before the batter was completely smooth, thinking about gluten and how it toughens cakes. With a box mix it’s probably impossible to overwork the flour, though… I don’t know. :)
I layered spoonfuls of each color in rainbow order first one way…
…then another, because I get bored far too easily. :)
After all the ‘baby’ cakes were cooled, I colored frosting in the same five colors. Bunny’s idea was for me to color each cupcake one color, and have rows of each color, like a real rainbow. Upon reflection, this would have been a much simpler option than what I chose to do…
I did have a reason for this, however. After attending about 35,746 kiddie birthday parties (and counting!!), I knew what would happen if there were 5 each of red, orange, green, blue, and purple. "I want the blue one! Why didn’t I get the blue one??” All moms worth their stretchmarks know: with toys and desserts variety is NOT a good thing. Uniformity = happiness.
Bunny was happy to share these with her classmates, and they all seemed happy to gobble them down. They were pretty on the inside, too. :)
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