SUMMER BLOG CHALLENGE

RAINBOW CUPCAKES FROM SCRATCH

When I knew that I would be watching my nieces for my over-worked, single-mother sister for the summer, I asked the girls to write out a Top 10 list of what they wanted to do this summer. One of the activities requested from my eldest niece Arden was to learn how to bake. Since I had a preliminary list of what the girls wanted to do, I also quickly started boards for them on Pinterest. Today, when we were trying to figure out the activities that they wanted to do this week, I had Arden choose one of the pins on her board. She chose to make the Rainbow Cupcakes. The pins are great, but I used All Recipes for Rainbow Cupcakes Recipe.

Arden & Eryn posing with the ingredients

What You'll Need:

2 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour

2 teaspoons Baking Powder

1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1/2 Cup Milk

1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1/2 Cup Butter

1 Cup Granulated Sugar

3 Eggs

Food Coloring

3 Mixing Bowls

Mixing Spoons

Quartz Size Ziploc Bags

Measuring Cups

Measuring Spoons

12 Count Cupcake Tin

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray, grease, or insert cupcake holder into the 12 cup cupcake tin.

I let the girls pick which bowls they wanted to be in charge of. Since there were three of us it worked out well. You can always have kid(s) take turns adding ingredients or assisting in some way.

Bowl 1 - Arden

Mix together 2 1/2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Bowl 2 - Eryn

Mix together 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract - mix well until blended.

Bowl 3

Add in 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup granulated sugar, mix until fluffy (electronic mixer).

Mix in each egg separately.

Step 2

Combine all the bowl into one of the mixing bowls and mix well together. Unfortunately our mixer died in the middle of mixing together Bowl 3. But, we managed to get it to the desired consistency without too much effort. Once you have mixed all the ingredients up divide your batter. Pick how many different colors you would like to do. We chose four colors, two for each girl. Arden chose blue and green. Eryn picked purple and pink.

Step 3

However many colors you choose, that's how many quart sized Ziploc bags you'll need. Since we chose four colors we needed four bags. Each of our bags divided evenly produced 1 full cup of cupcake batter. Once the batter is in the bag, add desired amount of food coloring, close the bag securely and have them manipulate the bag with their hands to mix the food coloring into the batter.

Step 4

Once the bags were finished mixing, I asked the girls if they would rather spoon out the batter or if they wanted to pipe the batter in. Arden was brave and wanted to try to pipe the batter. So, I squeezed the batter into one corner of the bag and taught her how to hold it and apply the pressure. We cut the very tip of the bag and she squeezed the batter into the cups. This is definitely the preferred method if you want to stay more tidy and clean. Spooning out the batter is messy - but the kids love it!

Piping - cut a little bit of the corner bag off to create this technique

If you want a rainbow layer, then you should try to layer the different batters as best as possible. Once they decided that they wanted to spoon in the batter, we discovered that it was more like Girl Camo Cupcakes! Either way, they loved it and had a wonderful time making their cupcakes. Once the batter all gone, we popped the tin in the oven and let it bake. The recipe says 15-20 minutes, we baked ours for 30 minutes. We tested the cupcakes using a toothpick after 20 minutes and the toothpick came out with some batter still on it. We let it cook for 10 more minutes and the toothpick came out clean.

Spooning - the girls spooning batter in - messy, but they loved it!

We used store bought icing. I was going to attempt to make homemade icing from scratch, but all the recipe's I searched on-line seem to require powdered sugar, which we did not have in our pantry. Nonetheless, we were able to have some white icing delivered to us. Let the cupcakes cool before applying the icing.

Eryn icing her cupcake

EAT & ENJOY!! 

Enjoying the fruits of our labors...