Rainbow Cupcakes.

It was one of my good friend's birthday last week, and there was a bit of a BBQ get together at her house. I decided I wanted to make cupcakes for the occasion... Knowing her, I wanted them to be Rainbow Chip, with pink icing.

But, obviously, I wasn't going to make rainbow chip cupcakes from a box! I don't use packaged cake mix unless I can help it. I tried using a basic vanilla recipe (which I modified slightly) and adding sprinkles to the batter before cooking.

With Star Wars on in the background, I used the following recipe (adapted from cupcakes: a delicious collection of recipes). I should mention that I found the vanilla cupcakes slightly underwhelming... the rest of the attendees at the birthday party (and at the campfire the next night) thought they were great, but I was expecting better from a book that includes the word "delicious" in the title....(rainbow-y bits aside).


"But with the blast sheild down I can't see a thing!"

Rainbow-Vanilla Cupcakes

2 1/4 C flour

1 1/3 C sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 C + 1/4 C milk

3 tsp vanilla (I upped this considerably from what they recommend)

1/2 C butter, softened

2 large eggs

1/4 C rainbow sprinkles

Preheat the oven to 350F and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners (I used Winnie-the-Pooh because if you're going to make rainbow chip cupcakes... go big or go home, right?)

Combine the dry ingredients together, and add the milk, vanilla and butter, and beat with a hand mixer until blended. Then add the eggs and beat until smooth.

Gently mix the sprinkles into the batter (I divided the batter into two smaller batches... which worked out nicely. The sprinkles soften after a while, and the color runs if you over stir!) and fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full.

Bake for about 18 min. Let cool before icing.

Rainbow bits!

For the icing, I had a bunch of cherries lying around, and since I needed to make pink icing, I figured, why not?

I made a basic butter icing, and just chopped the cherries, warmed them a bit to soften them up, and tossed them in.

In the future, I would highly recommend removing the skins first, because I ended up picking them out after, which was considerably more work than skinning would have been. I didn't mind little cherry chunks, but the skins didn't really get any smaller... The things you learn. It tasted great though!

Note to self: Remove skins first next time...

Overall, I was pretty happy with how they turned out. The cupcakes were tasty, but aside from the rainbow bits nothing super special (I will definetly be on the hunt for a different vanilla cupcake recipe) but the sprinkles worked out wonderfully! I would definetly make rainbow chip cupcakes again. The icing was also really awesome! I decorated them with the gum paste flowers that did not arrive in time to put on Penny's wedding cupcakes, and I love the Pooh/Tigger/Piglet wrappers.

Cute!