Colorful Cupcakes – A Tutorial

by Kaylah Stroup

That’s right! A tutorial on the cutest cupcakes around! I don’t have a “go to” white cake recipe yet so this tutorial is only about coloring your cupcakes. You will need your own recipe or a box of cake mix.  

 
Supplies needed:
▴ Food coloring. I used this. It’s really bright and doesn’t leave a gross taste in your cupcakes!
▴ Four bowls and four spoons.
▴ Cake batter. White cake will do best. With yellow cake your colors will look dingy and not so pretty.

After you cake batter is all mixed up separate it equally into four bowls (or more if you’re doing more colors!) 

Now put a dab of food coloring in each. Remember a little bit goes a loooong way with food coloring.  Make sure to stir thoroughly, you don’t want to be eating little chunks of unmixed food coloring later and you also don’t want to find a section of white cake batter in your bowl when you’re scooping it out.

Tip: try mixing colors to get that perfect shade if your brand of food coloring doesn’t have it.

Now it’s time to scoop the batter into the papers. There are two different ways you could do this. You could do one layer per color, it takes approximately 3/4 of a spoonful per color for four colors. Or take quarter spoon fulls and make lots of layers.

Whichever you choose, make sure not to mix the colors when putting them in the paper. I like to let me spoon drip into the paper while shaking it in an up and down motion. When you plop the colors down you may want to flatten it out if just doing the four layers but make sure not to stir! Use your finger to make layers flat even layers.

Above left- quarter spoon fulls in lots of layers. Above right- 3/4 spoon fulls in only four layers. 

Tip: White papers work best. You’ll be able to see how pretty the cupcake inside looks through white. With other colors it looks kind of gross, trust me!

Super easy right!? Now bake them, frost them and enjoy them!!

Another tid bit of information:
With these cupcakes I get significantly less cupcakes than if I were to just make white ones. The box says it’ll make 24 cupcakes, when I color them I usually get 15 or so. I suppose it’s from small amounts of batter getting left in bowls and it just adds up.

I hope whether or not you knew how to do this previously you learned something new or it simply inspired you! If you make some leave me a link, I’d love to see!
xoxo.

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19 comments

Caitlin August 9, 2011 - 5:37 pm

I made these cupcakes this Sunday and they turned out so cute! Everyone loved them! Thanks for the inspiration 🙂

The Savvy Women's Institute August 17, 2011 - 8:34 am

I just made these using your tutorial! So much fun and just stone cold amazingness!!! Thank you!!

Love, Cora October 31, 2011 - 9:28 pm

AWESOME! Thanks for your tips. I definitely will try soon!

Cora November 3, 2011 - 10:27 pm

I featured you and your recipe on my blog! I hope you like it and got lots of views!

http://www.lovecora.com/?p=430

Cathenia January 15, 2012 - 10:09 pm

I made some of these for my son's birthday. It was so fun and everyone loved them.

J February 14, 2012 - 11:07 pm

These look awesome! Same colors as Moon Mist Ice cream 🙂

Officinadellincanto February 16, 2012 - 1:29 pm

wow!

Anonymous February 17, 2012 - 5:27 pm

Thanks for sharing!

Danielle Faith February 19, 2012 - 3:12 am

I made one of these for fun. It was great! I did it as a bunt cake though. 🙂

Emmy February 22, 2012 - 2:39 am

Thanks for the great tutorial! I made some tonight! http://www.flickr.com/photos/emalc/6919281483/

Tess March 13, 2012 - 11:33 pm

they look good! what cake batter did you use?

besidEmyselpH March 21, 2012 - 4:51 pm

So, it was this photo I found on Pinterest that led me to your blog (lovelovelove it)! Making these with my daughters for Easter. Thank you !!!

Steffanie March 25, 2012 - 5:25 pm

I wonder if this would work with cake-batter that I make with white cake mix and 7-Up to cut calories??

Jadie :) April 6, 2012 - 9:05 pm

Made these for Easter and they look amazing! Thank you so much for posting this! I took note of your tip and used two boxes of mix and came out with 31 cupcakes! I also used 6 colors for more color combinations! Thanks again! 🙂

Ana Maria Mendez April 9, 2012 - 9:37 pm

honey i did it but with pancakes!
thank you so very-strongly-much,
kisses from spain

You can see my pancakes here =)
http://yotengoalas.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/panquecas-de-colores-pastel.html

Kelly May 14, 2012 - 1:48 am

I made some in rainbow colors! http://pinterest.com/pin/180495897535638989/

Birgit Blau July 16, 2012 - 8:57 pm

Thanks for the inspiration. Here is my first try to bake "rainbow" cupcakes: http://birgitblau.tumblr.com/post/27353265223/inspired-by-other-bloggers-ive-wanted-to-bake

Kenyan Belle August 3, 2012 - 8:06 am

Just looking at them makes me hungry 🙂

Anonymous April 17, 2014 - 3:44 am

I made these tonight and they were great! Thanks for the suggestion. Cute Easter cupcakes for my son's class 🙂

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