Rainbow Cupcakes

In my house, cupcake baking without a particular purpose often happens on a Sunday.  By Sunday I've usually completed all my weekend tasks and errands, and I'm relaxed enough to begin a small project.  This is the circumstance I found myself in yesterday, coupled with my desire to eat cake.

I usually make my cakes and cupcakes from scratch, as I am gluten intolerant and generally follow a low FODMAPs diet (that's for fructose malabsorbtion, click for further reading if you're interested).

This time I decided to use a Basco gluten free Vanilla Cupcake packet mix that I found in my pantry last weekend.  I hadn't used this mix before, I think it's sold at Woolworths supermarkets.  It contains milk and soy, so it's not entirely FODMAPs friendly, but I figure if I don't eat too many of the cupcakes I should be fine!

I started mixing the batter according to the directions, but before pouring it into the cups I was inspired to experiment.  I'd seen a blog post some time in the past where the blogger made a rainbow cake or cupcakes by layering coloured cake mix, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I split up the mixture (roughly) evenly into six smaller containers, and added food colouring to each to turn them into a vibrant rainbow colour.  It takes quite a bit of colouring to get the colours this bright, so if you have any allergies or issues with food colouring this probably isn't a recipe for you!  I imagine you could do something using natural colourings (dried fruit powders etc.) if you had the time and inclination, but this was a quick Sunday morning task.

Next step was to lay out the patty cups in a muffin tray, and drop a spoonful of each coloured batter into each cup.  I dropped them in on top of each other and then left them, but if you wanted to make a marbled effect you could gently run a skewer through each cup before baking.  I found my batter was quite firm so the colours didn't run at all, if your intention is to have rainbow striped cupcakes perhaps adding a bit of extra liquid might do the job.

Next step is to bake as per your recipe instructions.  Mine said 20-25 minutes, I cooked these for 21 minutes and they came out looking fine.

Once you have let your cupcakes cool, it's time to decorate them!  It's worth waiting until they are completely cool as if they retain any heat in them you'll have trouble getting the icing to stick.
I had some leftover lime frosting in my fridge from my last batch of Vegan Coconut & Lime cupcakes (recipe to come later), so I frosted five of my cupcakes with this, and the remaining seven with the buttercream frosting that came in the pack (coloured with red and blue food colouring to make a light purple).  Then I went a bit nuts with the rainbow sprinkles!

Now for the fun part - checking out the insides!  The first one was ceremoniously cut open and I was pleased with the result, until my partner pointed out it was missing a colour.  I had to cut it again in another direction to find the green section.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the results.  The colours were still vibrant after cooking, and the colouring didn't have too much of an effect on the taste.  The lime icing adds a more "adult" flavour to the cakes, the butter frosting is more traditional.

If you attempt to make these again, send me a comment and photo.  I'd love to see how others go.