Now that we’re in a lull between holidays, and there’s nothing festive I can really write about (Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in Walpole is Irish), I have decided to bake something that has always intrigued me.

Ever seen those rainbow cupcakes on Twitter or Tumblr and wonder how those people possibly do that? I know I always have, so I decided to find out.  So, as I searched the web for the best possible way to make colored cupcakes, I settled on Betty Crocker’s recipe.  This recipe uses a cake mix instead of doing it all from scratch, so it’ll be easier to make the batter, which will bring more focus to ensuring not to mess up when it comes to making the cupcakes colorful.

Ingredients:

• 1 box of Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ white cake mix
• 1 ¼ cups water
• ⅓ vegetable oil
• 3 egg whites
• food coloring; preferably red, yellow, green, and blue
• 1 container of frosting

This recipe should make a dozen cupcakes, so adjust it however you need to.

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat cake mix, water, vegetable oil, and egg whites: These directions will also be on the box of the cake mix. Be careful when doing the egg whites to ensure that you don’t get any of the yolk in the bowl. Beat until everything is mixed evenly.
3. Divide the batter into different bowls: Depending on how many colors you wish to use, use that many bowls. I only used red, blue, yellow and green, so I used 4 bowls. However, you can also combine colors to create purple and orange, and in that case, use 6 bowls.
4. Mix different color food coloring into each bowl: For a darker shade, add more food coloring.
5. Place cupcake baking cups in a regular-size muffin pan.
6. In each muffin pan, place 1 tablespoon of one color, then the next color, and then the next color. Keep doing this until all the batter is gone: Make sure you don’t fill the muffin tins too much; the batter should be a little under the top, or else you will end up getting muffin-looking cupcakes like I did.
7. Place the pan in the oven and cook for 30 minutes.
8. Let the cupcakes cool until you frost: When it comes to the frosting, vanilla will look the best with these rainbow cupcakes, but chocolate is a personal favorite of mine, so I did both. However, the choice is up to you.

So, now you have a common dessert, but made in a much more fun way.  Also, when you share these with people, they’ll be so impressed and think they’re some of the coolest things they’ve ever seen (I know I did).