These easy Rainbow Cupcakes with fluffy white cloud-like frosting and gorgeous blue sky cupcake batter are as delicious as they are beautiful! Easy to make for parties, these Rainbow Cupcakes are perfect for any occasion!
Rainbow Cupcakes
OH MY GOSH, you guys! I couldn’t be more pleased with how these Rainbow Cupcakes turned out! Talk about a fun dessert recipe, holy moly! This was SO incredibly fun for me and the kids to make together! I swear, I was just like a kid at Christmas alongside my children making these colorful fondant rainbows and adding these stunning fondant rainbows over top the cloud-like homemade buttercream frosting! Yes! All the yeses!
Rainbow Cupcakes Recipe
Baking with my children has become one of my most favorite things to do with them! If you’re a regular reader, you may have gathered that already from my other posts! 😉 We have prepared tons of delicious baked treats on this website, I hope you decide to check out more of them and get in the kitchen with your kids and have a blast! This Rainbow Cupcakes recipe is such a special one to me and my children! I hope you enjoy making it as much as we did!
Easy Rainbow Cupcakes
One of the things I aim to do with all my recipes, dessert or no, is to make them easy to replicate again and again at home not only for us but for you and your families, too. I also believe in getting the kids involved at an early age in the kitchen so they can learn the tips and tricks to be successful in the kitchen, too! Then, when they get older, they can remake all their childhood favorites for their friends, loved ones, and eventually children they’ll have. That is an absolute dream of mine, you know! Imagining my children pulling their children close and saying “Hey kids, today mommy/daddy is going to make you one of my favorites when I was a child!” and then making these Rainbow Cupcakes with them. Gah! It gets me misty just thinking about it!
Simple Rainbow Cupcakes
The beauty of this recipe is its simplicity. We chose to use ready-made fondant to make this baking and decorating process way easier than making homemade fondant. But we chose to make the homemade buttercream and cupcake batter from scratch. Could you use a cake mix or jarred frosting for these Rainbow Cupcakes? Sure! But we’ve gotten rather good at this homemade buttercream recipe. It decorates spectacularly and easily, you know? You gotta stick with what works, and this? Totally does.
Gorgeous Rainbow Cupcakes
It doesn’t have to be complicated to be beautiful. This Rainbow Cupcakes recipe isn’t complex in the least! Little ones can get in there and help with the cupcake baking, decorating, and especially the rainbow creating. I mean, that’s the best part! Creating rainbows from this gorgeous fondant is like creating edible masterpieces like you would with clay! I love that, you know? Fondant reminds me so much of playing with clay and Play-Doh.
How to Make Rainbow Cupcakes
To make these GORGEOUS Rainbow Cupcakes like we did, you will need to gather the following ingredients:
- All-purpose flour
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Softened butter
- Granulated sugar
- Large eggs
- Milk
- Blue gel food coloring
- Confectioners’ sugar
- Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple fondant
You will also need the following tools and baking supplies to make these Rainbow Cupcakes a huge colorful success:
- Muffin pan with either paper muffin liners or silicone liners
- Sifter
- Electric mixer
- Wire rack
- Silicone decorating mat
- Whisks
- Piping bag
- Wilton tip #12
- Bowl of water with food-safe paintbrush
- Paring knife
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin pan with either paper muffin liners or silicone liners (whichever you choose).
In a small bowl using a sifter, sift together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt.
Using an electric mixer, beat together butter, sugar and eggs. Alternate adding milk and dry ingredients into your wet ingredients. Start and finish with dry ingredients.
Once batter is formed, add a small drop of blue gel food coloring and beat until completely tinted, adding drop by drop until desired color has been achieved. Pour batter into each the sections of your muffin pan, filling it up about 2/3 of the way. Bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle of a cupcake. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
Using your electric mixer, beat together butter, confectioners’ sugar, and milk. Beat on medium and gradually increase to high. Once the buttercream is formed, scoop frosting into a piping bag with Wilton icing tip #12 attached.
Frost each cupcake by adding small dollops all over the top. This will make the buttercream look like fluffy clouds.
Grab all the colors of your fondant and place it onto a silicone mat to prepare making the rainbows.
Take a small piece of your red fondant and roll it out so that it’s a strip about 5 inches long and ½ inch thick.
Arch the red strip and continue to do this with the rest of the colors, placing one beneath the other: red, orange, yellow, green, blue purple.
In between each fondant strip, you may brush some water using a food-safe paintbrush so that the fondant strips stick together.
Trim your fondant rainbows with a good quality paring knife where you see fit.
Cut each fondant rainbow in half with your paring knife.
Insert one fondant half-rainbow into each frosted cupcake, as shown.
When you break them open, they look like THIS! OMG! Aren’t they absolutely GORGEOUS!?!?
Full recipe instructions can be found below! 🙂 What do you think of these gorgeous Rainbow Cupcakes? Do you think you and your kids can make these too? Check out my other magical posts, including rainbows, unicorns, mermaids, and more! Don’t forget about all our other cupcake recipes and dessert recipes too!
Rainbow Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the cupcakes:
- 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- 3/4 cup butter softened
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs large
- 1/2 cup milk + 2 tbsp
- Blue gel food coloring
For the buttercream and decorations:
- 2 sticks butter softened
- 4 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 2-3 tbsp milk
- 2-4 ounces red fondant
- 2-4 ounces orange fondant
- 2-4 ounces yellow fondant
- 2-4 ounces green fondant
- 2-4 ounces blue fondant
- 2-4 ounces purple fondant
Instructions
- Using a sifter, in a small bowl, sift together dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and salt.
- Using an electric mixer, beat together butter, sugar, and eggs.
- Alternate adding milk and dry ingredients into your wet ingredients. Start and finish with dry ingredients.
- Once batter is formed, add a small drop of blue gel food coloring and beat until completely tinted. Add drop by drop until desired color is achieve, beating well each time.
- Add batter into each section of your muffin pan, filling it up about 2/3 of the way.
- Bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle of a cupcake.
- Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
- Using an electric mixer, beat together butter, confectioners’ sugar and milk. Beat on medium and gradually increase to high.
- Once the buttercream is formed, scoop into a piping bag with Wilton icing tip #12 attached.
- Frost each cupcake by adding small dollops all over the top. This will make the buttercream look like fluffy clouds.
- Take a small piece of your red fondant and roll it out so that it’s a strip about 5 inches long and ½ inch thick.
- Arch the red strip and continue to do this with the rest of the fondant colors, placing one beneath the other: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple fondant.
- In between each fondant strip, you may brush some water with a food-safe paintbrush so that the fondant strips stick together.
- Trim your fondant rainbows with a good quality paring knife where you see fit.
- Cut each fondant rainbow in half.
- Insert one fondant half-rainbow into each frosted cupcake. Serve and enjoy!
