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

A Retry of the Blood Orange Cupcakes

I was so bummed all day about last night's cupcakes. Despite my best googling efforts, I was unable to find anyone that has ever had the similar problem with a beige batter inexplicably turning blue-grey in the oven. My first efforts to blog about my baking were just sadly lacking, and it was almost an embarrassment being as I consider myself a better baker than producing moldy-looking cupcakes. So tonight I was determined to avenge these baking mishaps by straightening out the blood orange cake recipe.

My dad was in town for the night because he's working in my neighborhood these past few days, and after meeting him for a drink after work, I took him to Garden of Eden, one of my favorite places in Hoboken and also the best place to find exotic fruits and vegetables. I picked up a few more blood oranges, and we perused the wide array of produce. There are a lot of great cupcakes to be imagined out of all those different fruits.

My first change in the recipe was instead of adding the orange juice directly to the milk, I first added additional sugar and reduced it down to a syrup on low heat on the stove. I think the original recipe was too wet, and this helped cut some of that, plus add some sugar that was lacking in the original. Once this syrup cooled, I added it to the milk to comprise the wet ingredients. Other than that, the only change I made was to add some red and orange gel food color to the batter before the egg whites as a preventative measure against the grey. I would have preferred just the natural ingredients, but I wasn't about to serve a something that looked so awful (except to my coworker Kara today, but I gave her fair warning it wasn't supposed to look like that). The end result was a much, much better cupcake. Not only was the color much improved, but the orange taste was more pronounced and less bland.

These cupcakes are making the trek into the city with me tomorrow for work. I get some really weird looks when I walk onto my bus with my cupcake carrier. One girl in the streets of NYC followed me down a block yelling at my back "YO! Can I have some cupcakes?!?!" last time I brought cupcakes to work. Let's hope tomorrow's transport doesn't provoke that sort of anxiety again.

Wooooo...Finally a success!