Rainbow Cupcakes

If you come here often then you'll know I love making cupcakes. The best part for me is the decorating as you can take it from a tasty cupcake to a Instagram worthy picture with just a few simple steps and techniques. I have seen these rainbow cupcakes floating around Pinterest and thought they looked super cute, and me being me set myself the challenge to recreate them. Fear not, you don't have to have an artistic flare to decorate them as it's super simple and easy! I used a vanilla cupcake as the base and then just coloured some vanilla frosting blue to create the sky and used plain frosting to create the clouds for the rainbow strip to sit on.  You wont find a pot of gold at the end of these cupcakes but I can guarantee you a sweet, fizzy treat!

These would be perfect for a children's birthday party or as an alternative to a birthday cake, although that doesn't mean to say that big kids cant have them too...

Rainbow Cupcakes
(Makes 12)
125g Self raising flour

125g Caster sugar 

125g Butter 

1/4 Tsp Bicarbonate of soda 

2 Eggs 

1 1/2 Tbsp Milk 

1/4 Tsp Vanilla extract 

1 400g Tub Vanilla Buttercream 

Blue Food Gel/Colouring

6 Multicolour Belts (Sweets), cut into halves. 

Preheat the oven to 170C, Gas Mark 5. Line a cupcake tin with 12 cases.

In a large mixing bowl place all of the cupcake ingredients inside and whisk together using an electric hand mixer until smooth. This should take around 3/4 minutes.

Equally distribute the mixture between the cupcake cases, filling them three quarters of the way full. Place in the oven for 18 minutes until golden brown or if a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.

Put three quarters of the vanilla frosting into a small mixing bowl and add a small amount of blue food gel/colouring. Beat well and once you get a sky blue colour leave to one side. If you need to add more colouring, add it gradually to create the desired colour.

With the remaining frosting place in a piping bag with a small hole nozzle attached.

Place the blue frosting in a piping bag with a large hole nozzle attached.

Place the piping bag with the blue frosting in the centre of a cupcake, squeeze down and circle off to create a large circle/blob of frosting. Then with the non coloured frosting, squeeze two small blobs of frosting on opposite sides of the blue frosting, this will act as the clouds for the rainbow sweets. Take one strip of the multicoloured belt and place on top of the clouds, in an arch fashion. You should be left with a hole underneath the strip to create that rainbow arch.

Repeat until all the cupcakes are decorated.

Will last up to four days in an air tight container.