It takes sunshine and rain to make a rainbow, or in this case, vanilla cake mixture and food colouring! These joyful rainbow cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream are sure to brighten your day and put a smile of your face.
Featuring a rainbow vanilla sponge base, these cupcakes are topped with a smooth and creamy white chocolate buttercream and are decorated with THE cutest unicorn sprinkles and decorations.
Making a rainbow sponge is super easy!
Don’t you just love it when something looks really impressive but it’s actually so easy to make? Well, this recipe is exactly that!
Step 1: Whip up a simple cake mixture
Start by making a simple vanilla sponge mixture. Equal parts butter, sugar and flour, couple of eggs, a dash of vanilla extract, and I always like to add a tablespoon of milk.
Step 2: Dye the cake mixture
Split the sponge mixture into four bowls and dye each a different colour. I chose to use yellow, green, blue and red colours.
TOP TIP: Use food colouring gel or pastes to get a vibrant, bright colour. Liquid food colourings are more diluted and therefore the colours will look more washed out.
Step 3: Fill the cupcake cases
Spoon one coloured mixture into the left-hand side of the cupcake case, now spoon a different colour on the right-hand side. Repeat with the remaining two colours, spooning them on top. Hopefully that all makes sense, pictures below if not. This will give you lovely distinct colours in the sponge once they’re baked.
Other cupcake recipes you will love:
Rainbow cupcake recipe (makes 12)
Ingredients
For the sponge:
200g Stork tub
200g caster sugar
200g self-raising flour
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon milk
Green, blue, red and yellow food colouring – make sure you use the gels/pastes, not the liquid types. I used PME Concentrated Food Pastes.
For the white chocolate buttercream:
200g unsalted butter, soft at room temperature
200g icing sugar
100g white chocolate
For the decoration:
Cute and colourful sprinkles – I used Dr.Oetker Unicorn Head Sprinkles and House of Cake Unicorn & Rainbow decorations
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a cupcake baking tray with 12 cupcake cases.
Start by making the cupcakes.
In a large bowl beat together the butter, caster sugar and vanilla extract until light and creamy. Mix in the eggs one at a time, adding 2 tablespoons of the 200g flour with each egg to stop the mixture from curdling.
Add the remaining flour, baking powder and milk and fold together until smooth and combined.
Divide the mixture into four bowls. Using the food colouring gels, dye one bowl of mixture red, one blue, one green and one yellow.
Spoon one of the coloured mixtures into the left-hand side of a cupcake case, now spoon a different colour on the right-hand side. Repeat with the remaining two colours, spooning them on top. Repeat for all 12 cupcakes.
Bake for 16-18 minutes until the cupcakes have risen, spring back to the touch and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool.
Now make the white chocolate buttercream.
Melt the white chocolate in the microwave in 20-second blasts until smooth. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, beat the butter until super soft, pale in colour and smooth. Sieve the icing sugar into the bowl and beat again until you have a smooth, lump-free buttercream.
Pour the white chocolate into the buttercream and fold together until combined.
Time to decorate!
Spread or pipe the buttercream on top of the cupcakes. I used a large 12 point closed star nozzle to get that lovely swirl effect. Finish the cupcakes with a scatter of rainbow sprinkles. CUTE!
Store the cupcakes in an airtight container for up to 3 days.