This weekend a good friend was having a birthday party, and I simply couldn’t turn up without cake in hand! I’d originally planned to do some simpler 2-colour cupcakes, but happened upon some gel colours on my supermarket run, and knew he’d love these, reminiscent of Nottingham Pride last weekend.
Believe it or not they are super-easy to make, and don’t require anything other than some gel colours (don’t even contemplate using normal food colouring, it’s fine for icing but doesn’t have in any way the same effect in the cake itself), and if you’d like to ice them, multi-coloured sugar sprinkles are a great finishing touch.
(nosy cat optional!)
The cake mix was a simple victoria sponge, divided into 5 bowls and coloured accordingly.
Using a teaspoon, put a small amount of the purple into the bottom of the cake case. I found it was good to spread this one out so it covered the all the way across. Then, one colour at a time, spoon the same amount of each colour into the middle of the case.
Annoyingly I didn’t take a photo at this stage, but the idea is to keep spooning the next colour into the middle of the previous one, so it pushes the other one down and out, and you end up with the top of the cake having concentric circles of each colour. Don’t be tempted to try spreading the other colours out, spoon them in and do not mix, stir or touch! Otherwise you will end up with smudgy colours and cupcakes more reminiscent of grey rain clouds than rainbows….
Bake the cupcakes for just under the normal time for your oven – I gave them 11 minutes at 180 degrees C in my fan-assisted, and keep an eye on them in the last few minutes, as you don’t really want them to start browning, it can spoil the rainbow effect.
I chose to carefully peel mine out of the cupcake cases to show off their food colour, then topped off with whipped, white vanilla buttercream, and a good shake of sugar sprinkles!
Not your average birthday cake – but definitely cupcakes that I’m proud of! Striking, sweet, and particularly photogenic 🙂
bakearama 
Love those colors, its so bright and cheery! =)
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A good substitute for the lack of sunshine 🙂
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Well done Jen, they look very pretty!
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