Hey friends! In this post we are making rainbow cupcakes. We’re going to start off by making a basic yellow cake batter, then we will add a little citrus flavor to it via lemon extract. Instead of using the same red, yellow and blue, I decided to use more bold colors. I used the magenta, teal, orange and purple gel food colors.
I prefer gel colors over water/liquid colors because, in my opinion, they are more vibrant. I find that whenever I use liquid colors, my colors always dull after baking. With these gel colors, I believe the cupcakes actually brightened up after baking!
Not only were these cupcakes extremely gorgeous, they were also moist! Give the recipe a try, and tell me what you think!
If you enjoyed these DIY Rainbow Cupcakes, check out some of my other cupcake recipes!
Southern Peach Cobbler Cupcakes
Print this recipe for Rainbow Cupcakes below and let me know what you think!
Homemade Rainbow Cupcakes (from scratch!)
Ingredients
Cupcakes:
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour sifted
- 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
- 3 eggs
- ¾ cup vegetable oil
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 ¼ cups milk 2% or whole milk
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 ½ tsp lemon extract
Homemade Frosting:
- 8 tbsp salted butter
- 1 lb powdered sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ cup milk
- Vibrant gel food coloring your favorite colors
Instructions
- Sift all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and mix.
- Use a smaller bowl to create a well in the flour mixture. (This prevents you from having to use multiple bowls for your wet and dry ingredients.)
- Add eggs, sugar, milk, and oil, and vanilla. Mix all ingredients together with a hand mixer until well-combined.
- Add lemon extract into batter and mix until combined.
- Divide batter equally into 4 bowls (about 1 cup eacand add the gel food coloring to each bowl. I used pink, purple, orange, and blue.
- Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
- Add about 1-2 tablespoons of each color batter to the cupcake tins at a time. Do not mix the batter to keep the layered rainbow effect when baking!
- Leave about ¾ of an inch of room in the cupcake tins to avoid overflow when baking.
- Bake cupcakes at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
- Allow cupcakes to cool for about an hour before icing.
Frosting:
- Mix together softened butter, powdered sugar, vanilla extract and milk. MIx with a hand mixer until fully creamed together.
- Use a pastry bag to pipe frosting onto cooled cupcakes.
- Sprinkle cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles.
- Serve and enjoy!
Video
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Rosie, you are the best!!! I love all of your recipes. Thank you so much!!
Thank you for the sweet comment Nita!