Rainbow Cupcakes

Today (actually right now) we're having a party for a few people in my ward. I volunteered/was voluntold to make cupcakes. And while I used the book "Hello, Cupcake" for the decoration idea, but I decided that regular vanilla cupcakes weren't good enough for me. I decided that I wanted to try rainbow cupcakes! I've seen rainbow cakes, and they are awesome, and I had food coloring... Anyway...

Start by making a normal white/vanilla cake mix. (I'm sure you could probably even get away with yellow.) Divide the batter into 6 bowls in about equal proportions. Dye each bowl a rainbow color-- I did red (pink), orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

Then I tediously spooned about a spoonful of each color into cupcake lined trays. I didn't spread out the colors, but could have. You'll see the design they made.

On this one you can see all the colors if you look close enough (even if it's blurry)

Bake as directed. THEN: (this is very important) Let the cupcakes sit in the baking pans for a full 5 minutes (I set a timer to make sure I get the full time in). This allows the moisture to redistribute and keeps the cupcakes more moist as they cool.

Baked they look like this; kind of psychedelic.

But the real fun comes when you cut into them... because who sees the tops anyway?

A side view:

And the Inside:

Sweet right? 

(To get the colors in layers instead of concentric rings of color I think you could put each color in a ziploc bag and pipe them evenly in the liners rather than plopping with a spoon.. maybe next time)

For the decorating you'll have to go get the book... but Here's why my final product looked like:

Here are the Birthday People; Nick, McKensey and Jillian

And here's another close up. I'm pretty proud of myself here...