Rainbow Cupcakes

These rainbow cupcakes were time consuming but fun to make. They are a basic white cake recipe with gel food coloring added. The icing is a basic American vanilla butter cream. I might have previously posted the white cake recipe but I will post it again below because it's one of my favorites and it's extremely easy and quick to throw together - no mixer needed. Instead of butter, the recipe uses heavy whipping cream for the fat. Non whipped whipping cream - like I said, no mixer needed. I originally found the recipe on allrecipes.com and have been making it for a few years now. It produces a very smooth crumb and moist cake. For the food coloring, I used the Americolor gel colors. I tried to follow the colors of the rainbow but was a bit limited in my color selections. It was difficult to judge at first how much of each colored batter to dump into each liner. It took a few tries before I got a good system going and could judge it correctly. Near the end, I had some bowls empty while some still had batter but it was close.`These were really fun to take photos of - as you can tell because I posted about 20 photos of them below! My son Preston's last day of preschool is tomorrow and they are having a party. These cupcakes will be a big hit with the preschoolers I'm sure. I topped each cupcake with a sugar animal or flower or heart - another thing preschools love - pure sugar.

The cupcakes are cute with the wrapper on but much more exciting on the inside!

Cream Cake
allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

2 eggs 3/4 cup white sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour I used 1 cup all purpose & 1/2 cup cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup heavy whipping cream I also added some almond extract

Directions:

1.	Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease one 9x9 inch square pan.
2.	Beat eggs in a small bowl until very thick. Add the sugar and the vanilla, beating well.
3.	Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. In three parts add the flour mixture alternately with the whipping cream to the egg mixture, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.
4.	Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.