Easter Cupcakes!

Mini rainbow swirled cupcakes

I went home this weekend for Easter and used the opportunity (and available double oven) to bake somethings I've been wanting to try and some old favorites. One of my friends gave up cupcakes for Lent and I've been torturing her with pictures of all these cupcakes on my blogs.

Middle Tier - rainbow, lemon w/ lemon and mini rainbow

When it came time to break her cupcake ban, she knew exactly what kind she wanted - the rainbow, so those were on the must-bake list. I had also been looking at pictures of cupcake bouquets all week, and knew those would be good to give out to some family friends. Additionally, I've recently gotten some cake orders, and being as it's been a while since I've baked an actual cake, I figured it would be wise not to let the practice round wait until the day the order was due. That's going to be a whole separate post.

Bottom Tier - lemon w/ lemon frosting, vanilla minis, coconut

I made the rainbow first, setting aside a few plain white ones to make coconut-covered cupcakes for my mom. Lauren was a huge help with the rainbow, and I think she's even come up with a new technique to make them more tie dye than rainbow. I'll have to try it on the bigger ones in the future.


The cupcake bouquets were pretty awesome. I had seen them done by other people on a couple blogs, and they looked pretty difficult. While they were tricky, they weren't impossible. I decided to go with mini cupcakes. I love mini cupcakes, they're so cute, and on the bouquet they were even better. From every batter, I made a batch of minis and set these aside for the bouquets.



I piped frosting on the cupcakes so that they resembled flowers. Years ago, my mom and I took Wilton Course 1 at Michael's craft store, so I have some piped flower background, but it takes a few to practice on before I get the hang of it. While everyone else was dying Easter eggs, I was piping all these cupcakes.


These flower pots were on sale at Michael's this week for only 49 cents! In them, I fit half a styrofoam ball that would serve as the base for the cupcakes. The cupcakes are anchored into the styrofoam using toothpicks.


Everyone who was the recipient of one of these bouquets loved them. I really think they would be adorable as centerpieces on tables for a bridal shower or other event. They can also be done with more and larger cupcakes. I'm looking forward to experimenting with these in the future.

Rainbow Cupcakes

My mom has been asking me to make tie dye cupcakes forever. So this weekend while I was home, I decided (a.k.a. was coerced) to finally bake the tie dye cupcakes. The end result ended up being more rainbow than tie dye, so I'm going to call them that. These were really pretty, and they're perfect for Easter/Spring coming up.

Dyed batter

In order to make these, I started out with a white cake batter and dyed it five different colors. For the recipe, I just modified my vanilla recipe, eliminating the things that made it more beige than white - the egg yolks and some of the vanilla. I also used cake flour instead of all purpose flour because it's whiter. It was my first time using cake flour, and I think it gave the cake a really nice texture. In the future, I will definitely be playing around with trying recipes with cake flour vs. all purpose. The drawback to this is that cake flour is more expensive and comes in smaller quantities, and being as baking cupcakes has yet to draw an income for me, the ingredients tend to consume an already embarrassing portion of my discretionary income.

First three colors in

I used Wilton gel food dyes here, but I'm pretty sure that liquid ones would work as well. The color probably just wouldn't be as intense, and you would need to use more of them. I've seen these pretty awesome looking neon gel food colors in the supermarket, but I'm not sure who makes them. I think they would make pretty interesting looking colors.

After I dyed and mixed all the batter, I alternated spooning it into the cupcake trays. Suspiciously, despite it being my mom that wanted these, I was all alone when it came to the huge clean up using 6 different bowls caused. Hm...interesting.

End result - pretty!

Inside look at the cupcake

Because the cake was so colorful, I just paired these with plain vanilla frosting. I wish I had some neon sprinkles to put on top of these, but I think they looked good even without.

The white cake recipe (makes 24 cupcakes):
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 C sugar
7 large egg whites
3 C cake flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 C whole milk
2 tsp vanilla

Directions:
1. Cream together butter and sugar
2. Add egg whites and beat well
3. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt
4. Add 1/3 of flour mixture to butter mixture and beat until incorporated. Add milk and vanilla alternately with the flour mixture, ending with the flour
5. Divide batter between into lined cupcake trays
6. Bake for 18-22 minutes, until cake springs back when touched