Rainbow Cupcake

Since Naia was almost 3 years old, I have asked her to join me in the kitchen, to bake. Sometimes, we even invited some friends over for a baking playdate. Last year, I made it a routine to have a baking session with her every weekend, making different cakes, cookies, muffins, anything I can come up with. The point is that it's a fun activity for both of us, with an easy recipe that a toddler can follow but yummy nonetheless.

Recently, Naia is obsessed with paint and color-mixing. It's such a messy activity that I don't allow her to do it at home, since our apartment is too small to handle that kind of activities. When we went home to Jakarta recently, I bought her a bunch of paints and canvas, so she can do the mixings outside at my parent's backyard. She was so happy!

So when I heard about the new and upcoming rainbow cupcake trend, I thought this is a good idea to incorporate her new obsession with our baking session. So, I prepared all the ingredients to make an easy vanilla cupcake, armed with 4 food colorings: red, yellow, green and blue.

What You Need for the Batter:

• 3/4 cup self-raising flour


• 1/2 cup granulated sugar or regular sugar


• 3/4 cup or 200gr Unsalted butter, softened


• 2 eggs


• 2 tsp vanilla essence


• 3 tbsp milk

Food Colorings (make sure it's a safe and food degradable):

• Red


• Yellow


• Green


• Blue

Directions:

1.  Preheat your oven to 190-200C degrees
2.  In a large bowl, use mixer (or whisk) to beat sugar into butter until creamy and fluffy.  The mixture should be light in color.
3.  Slowly stir in eggs and flour, making sure that each is thoroughly sitrred.  Mix in the vanilla.
4.  Stir in milk 1 tablespoon at a time, stirring thoroughly after each tablespoon is added.
5.  Divide mixture evenly into each of the smaller bowls.
6.  Add food coloring in this manner:

• Bowl 1: Red


• Bowl 2: Red and Yellow to make Orange


• Bowl 3: Yellow


• Bowl 4: Green


• Bowl 5: Blue


• Bowl 6: Blue and Red to make Purple

7.  Line muffin pan with muffin cups.  Starting with Purple, spoon the batter evenly into each cup, spreading lightly.  Continue layering, with blue, then green, yellow, orange and red.
8.  Bake for 15-20 minutes at 190-200C degrees.

Makes 12 regular-sized cupcakes.

We swirled the cupcakes with cream cheese frosting by incorporating the following ingredients:

• 3/4 cup cream cheese


• 1/2 cup unsalted butter


• 1/2 cup sugar (I usually use icing sugar)


• 3tbsp Milk, or as much as you need for a creamy and soft frosting

- Mix all ingredients together until creamy and soft.
- Sprinkle anything you can think of on top.  From the colorful sequins like we did, or shaved chocolates, or none at all.

Enjoy!