Rainbow Cupcakes

Ingredients:

Sour cream cake
1/2 cup butter softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 milk
Wilton Green color mix-ins, optional

Directions:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix. Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, set aside. in a medium sized bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup sour cream. Add flour and milk mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour. Batter will be thick. Fold in color mix-ins, if using.

Fill cupcake papers with 1/4 cup level measures of batter. Bake for 17 minutes. Let cool and set aside.

Buttercream Frosting

This is a simple confectioners' vanilla buttercream that is white so it will show color well, but if you prefer, you can find my Swiss buttercream recipe here, which will work well also.

2 cups of unsalted butter, softened
2 lbs. confectioners’ sugar - the finest you can find (usually 10x)
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp. Clear vanilla extract
* Additional milk or heavy cream, as needed

Directions:

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, mix together the butter and confectioners’ sugar. Begin mixing on low speed until crumbly, and then increase to high and beat for 3 minutes. Add milk.
Add vanilla extract and beat again for several minutes until light and fluffy.
*Note: If you find the buttercream is too stiff, you may add milk or heavy cream 1 tablespoon at a time until the mixture is spreading consistency.

Tint/top:

Violet gel food coloring
Royal blue gel food coloring
Leaf green gel food coloring
Golden yellow gel food coloring
Orange gel food coloring
12 maraschino cherries with stems, drained and patted dry

This is an estimation of the tinted icing amounts I used for these cupcakes. You’ll need a larger amount of violet versus the much smaller amount of orange. 

Divide the icing and tint accordingly. The only color you’ll need to create is indigo, and you can do that by adding one part blue food coloring to one part violet food coloring to untinted icing.

Have ready these amounts and frost in this order:

2 1/3 cups violet
1 1/2 cups indigo
1 cup blue
2/3 cup green
1/2 cup yellow
1/3 cup orange

Directions:

Transfer violet icing to a piping bag fitted with a large plain tip (Wilton 2A). I’m confident this could also be done with a zip-top bag with a corner snipped. 

Pipe an even line of frosting around the edge of a cupcake and then lightly fill in the middle with frosting. Repeat process with remaining frostings, getting smaller in diameter as you change icing colors. Repeat process with remaining cupcakes. Top each cupcake with a maraschino cherry.

Note:

This is a harder recipe, so you could use a box cake mix, just follow the directions for cupcakes and make sure you have plenty of time when doing these.