Tie Dyed Cupcakes!

My daughter LOVES the book Pinkalicious, we read it pretty much every night before bed. We have also made our fair share of pink cupcakes, green cupcakes, and even purple cupcakes. The other night we were reading the book and she asked me if I could make rainbow cupcakes. I had never made anything like that before so I was up for the challenge. Last night when I picked Bella up from school she asked me if we could make them. Since I still had blurry vision from my eye doctor appointment and needed a break from all of the craft show prep I said yes! I was not 100% sure how I was going to master this BUT luckily I remembered a blog I read that detailed how to make a rainbow cake so I applied the same principles. If you want to read about how to make that cake, here is the link: http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake.

Ok, here is what I did.
*I used a White Cake mix, since I have made different color cupcakes before I have found tinting the white is much easier than the yellow for obvious reasons. My 5 year old was part of the process so I will share how she "helped" in case you plan on doing this with your child! I followed the cake mix directions on the box and let my daughter add the ingredients, which I measured out in bowls so she could add them without mess.
*Once the batter was made I divided it into 6 bowls. I used about 1 cup of batter for each bowl. Then divided what was left evenly among the bowls.
*Then I tinted each of the bowls with a different icing color. I added the color and I let my 5 year old mix it in. Try not to overmix here, once you have the color well blended let it be! I used Wilton Icing colors since I have them on hand. I did use a store bought orange which worked fine too!
Here is a pic of what the batter looks like!

Now for the fun part, making the cupcakes! My daughter and I had some power struggle here for the best way for her to help but this is what worked best.
*Fortunately I have 2 cupcake pans so I can make all 24 at once. Add the cupcake wrappers, I recommend using white since the wrapper looks cool after it is done.
*Start with the red first. I used 2 tablespoons or soup spoons I guess you would call them. I filled about half of the spoon with the red batter then had my daughter scrap it off with the other spoon. This way she could help and the batter got where it needed to be. I would suggest using less than more, since that one bowl has to fill 24 cupcakes. By looking at the picture below you can see how much batter I used per color.
* I did the orange next, using the same process and put the batter next to the red. Then continued with the other colors, basically just layering the batter and the colors.
Here is a pic of what they looked like before they went into the oven.

I contemplated for a hot second to use a toothpick and swirl the batter but I wanted to see how these came out. In retrospect I should have done that on half of them to see what the result would have been.
Here is what they looked like when they came out of the oven! See what I mean about using the white wrappers! When you peel off the wrapper it looks even cooler!

To ice them I just made the Wilton Buttercream recipe and my daughter added some rainbow sprinkles on top. I have taken two pictures of what they look like on the inside...so cool!



I hope this blog was easy to understand, this is the first instructional blog I have written! The process is really easier than it looks and I am sure I am not inventing the wheel here but some of my friends wanted to know how I did it. The kids in my daughters class were so excited to eat these cupcakes and they were definitely so fun and easy to make! Enjoy!