Rainbow Cakes and Cupcakes

Spring is finally starting to make it's way into our neck of the woods! Apart from itchy eyes and sneezing, I love this weather! So to celebrate, I have started on all my projects with a BANG.

I am here to share those, and my other daily finds, with you all.

To start it off, I recently made a rainbow cake for my daughter's first birthday.

I LOVED the way this turned out! The cake looked tie-dyed on the inside and each cupcake was a different color. Not to mention, it was French Vanilla flavored. YUMMMM!

This is what you need:

-2 Boxes of cake Mix (choose whichever flavor you like, just be sure it's a white cake layer)
-A set of Food Coloring liquids (I just bought the Great Value brand pack that contained Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow)
-Your choice of icing colors and flavors, but enough to decorate your cake and cupcakes. I had three because of the different colors, but it was WAAAAAAAY too much icing!

Mix your ingredients according to the cake mix instructions. I used my handy dandy $4 hand mixer and it only took a couple of minutes.

Now for the fun part!! You will want to equally separate your cake mix into the number of bowls corresponding with the number of colors you want in your cake. I had four colors and I kept them pastel because it was for my little girl's birthday party in the spring...it just made sense to me! If you want more colors, you can always combine your food colors in the cake mix (ex. blue+red = purple), but remember, most of those colors will combine when you start pouring them into the pan.

Pour each bowl of mix into the pan one at a time. My cake pan is actually shaped to make a two layer cake in the form of an over-sized cupcake! You only need one box of cake mix for the cake layers, so when pouring in the cake mix, pour half of the bowl into one side (or round cake pan) and the other half of the mix into the other side/pan. It may not look like enough, but believe me, it will fluff up!!

Bake your cake according to the package directions. Since my pan isn't specified on the box of the cake mix, I went by the times for two round cake pans. Once the cake is done, allow it to cool. Then, using your icing selections, decorate you cake and cupcakes however you please! I used a spatula and a tipped decorating bag...I preferred the spatula because it didn't use NEARLY as much icing as the decorating bag did.

I only fit 10 cupcakes around the large cupcake on a 12in cake board. It was still more than enough confection for my daughter's party!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! ENJOY!!