How to make rainbow cupcakes

So now this is my 5th version of a rainbow cake - check out the other 4 here. This one was inspired by a photo on Pinterest posted by Mia B. I knew I saw these rainbow candy at our corner store so I had to try it. Rainbow candy or "Gay Bacon" according to Epic Mealtime - have you seen them, they make crazy extreme meals with fast food or in this case candy.

Ok, back to the cupcakes. Pretty simple, I used the cupcake recipe from Saucy's Sprinkles, then iced with blue tinted buttercream icing. I cut the rainbow candy in half and curved on the cupcakes to make an arc. The clouds are just mini marshmallows.
So cute and so easy to make. I made them for the bake sale at Lilo's school fun fair. They were a hit and sold fast.
And don't leave your iced cupcakes on top of the oven while you preheat it for dinner. The heat from the vent on the top melted a few cupcakes, I luckily had saved some extra icing so I re-iced them. The wrappers were a little sticky but no one complained.

How to make 4 different rainbow cakes

I realized that after Lilo's past birthday when she asked for a rainbow cake that I've made her a rainbow cake for the past 3 years.
Lilo's 3rd birthday was the start of the rainbow cakes. This layered cake was a lot of work - many batches of cake mix. I decided that I wanted to make the cake from scratch, not sure why. The cake was a little dry, some layers tasted better then other but I've learned to just stick to cake mixes, my mom always used them and they were always great so I'm going with it.

The layered rainbow cake idea came from here.

Lilo's 4th birthday we did rainbow cupcakes. I used cake mix this time but found a variation here, on Saucy's Sprinkles that makes it even tastier - replace the oil with melted butter and whip it all up.

To add extra fun to these cupcakes all the kids got a tray with treats to decorate the cupcakes with - it was a lot of fun that I think I will do again another year.

So for Lilo's 5th birthday she asked again for a rainbow cake so here came version 3. Again an idea from Saucy's Sprinkles blog to divide the batter and dye it up. Then scoop them into the pan and since the batter is nice and whipped the different colours don't run into each other.
I made the cake in a Pampered Chef batter bowl in 2 batches and layered them and trimmed to make it into a beautiful princess cake. Here's the directions. It was a fun surprize for Lilo's friends when I cut in and it was rainbow inside. And a freaky surprize when she pulled the Barbie out and found out the Barbie was only a torso.
And then for fun this summer when we had friends over I made the "Double Rainbow" cake. Remember that crazy Youtube video that was everywhere. Well I saw this idea and thought it would be a fun dessert. I made the cake with a angel food ring cake mold and cut it half, covered with icing and then M&Ms. I got Lilo to help me sort out the M&Ms and we got to snack on the brown ones.

Now to come up with a 5th version for her next birthday :)

How to throw a 4th birthday party

So little Lilo is 4 now - time does fly. I didn't do a big theme this year, it was just cupcakes. I made a rainbow out of cupcake.

I made 48 cupcakes - 2 batches of cake mix. I used this variation to the back of the box instructions from Saucy Sprinkles - 3 eggs, 1/2 cup melted butter and 1 cup water - beat with mixer and bake for 20 mins at 350. I don't think I'm going to try and make from scratch cake again - last years cake looks awesome but was really dry.

Then I gave each kids a little muffin tin that I filled with different candies to decorate their cupcakes with. Lilo nicely decorated hers, then ate the candy off and re-decorated - innovated young lady :)

Once my mom showed Isla what to do, she got into it too.

Alex just wanted to eat the cupcake, didn't want to fuss with the decorating.

Austin was concentrating hard on what he was doing.

Izzy sampling her creation.

Maddie was working hard with mom to get the right look.
I think Mom helped out a bit here :)

I also made aprons for all the kids - I forgot to get a picture of all them together. Oh well, here's Izzy modeling hers.

Instead of goody bags, their giveaways were the aprons and muffin tins (so they can all do muffin tin Mondays). I totally lucked into the muffin tins, they are look like muffin top tins but they work for this and they were only a dollar each. The fabric for the apron was donated to me from my sister-in-law.

And some of the pictures of the kids decorating their cupcakes weren't intended to look like that. I just forgot the flash and then the battery died so I couldn't just take more pictures. (the problem when you use manual) So I had to lighten them as much as I could in Adobe Lightroom. I kinda like the look, they look like old grainy photos.