rainbow cupcakes

Okay so they look like regular cupcakes from the outside but oh no... these are GORGEOUS on the inside!

For the batter I use Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe. Technically I was suppose to use white cake but all I had was yellow. It worked perfectly fine though. And if you want to go ol' school on me and make your batter from scratch then go right ahead :)

I failed and forgot to take a picture of the most important ingredient - Apple Sauce. Yep!

So the box directions say 1/3 cup oil but instead substitute the oil for apple sauce instead ok.

So I added 3 eggs, 1 1/3 cup water to the bottom of the mixer, then the cake mix and finally apple sauce on top. The other wet ingredients go in first so the cake mix doesn't get stuck to the bottom :)

After a LOTTTTT of mixing. Seriously, don't just mix for a 1-2 minutes and call it a day. Make your batter fluffier for slowly mixing then speed it up till almost the highest setting till you get to the highest speed then beat for about 5 minutes! I use setting 8 on a kitchenaid mixer.

While the batter is mixing THEN preheat your oven to 350*

Once it's done mixing, evenly divide up the mixture. This takes a while and was really messy. I used ziploc baggies but you can use plastic cups or paper bowls instead so it's less to clean up as well. I use the baggies so I can cut a hole in the corner and evenly coat the cupcake tins.

So as you see I then added food coloring to make 6 colors of the rainbow. Add as much or as little to make your own desired tint of color. Purple kinda looks like crap but in person it is really purple, not the nasty purple, blueish, brown color in the picture. Oh and I Indigo is missing but that's ok :)

Starting with purple put about 1Tlbs of mixture into each cup. Make sure it's spread evenly. Continue next with blue, green, yellow, orange and then finally red. You're making a backwards rainbow so this way a prettier color is on top.

With each layer just go slow and again, make sure it's even and try not to mix the colors.

On my oven I bake for EXACTLY 20 minutes. no more and no less. I don't even put a tooth pick in to check on them.

Once they are out take out of the pans right away and cover a little bit to cool. I half way cover them so some steam comes out but as you see by the lid I want most to stay in so it helps keep the cakes moist.

I use a store bought thing of white frosting but I like to whip it up in the mixer so it's fluffier and smoother.

To frost the cakes I put the frosting in a bag and cut the tip off. Unless you have a 2nd person to hold the bag for you then you can use my trick. I wrap the bag around a huge open vase and once it's filled it can easily come off with the frosting at the bottom and not on the sides.

Aren't they amazing! Believe me, the colors are much brighter in person.

Also, I'm not sure why but the colors from the bottom came up and over to the top while cooking. I don't know why but it looks cool none the less.

INGREDIENTS:

1. White or yellow cake mix
2. 1/3 cup apple sauce
3. 1 1/3 cup water
4. 3 eggs
5. food coloring
6. sprinkles

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. mix batter for 5-6 minutes
2. preheat oven to 350*
3. divide batter into 6 cups/bowls/baggies
4. add food coloring: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple
5. add 1tlb of each into each cake tin evenly making layers on top of each other
6. bake for 20 minutes, then remove from cake pan and cool in covered place for 1/2 hour
7. Fluff store bought frosting in mixer if desired then pipe on cakes
8. top with sprinkles or candies!