Rainbow Cupcakes

Rainbow cupcakes are colorful cakes perfect for spring time. The colors are all natural made with real fruit juice. My daughter loved them.

Course Dessert

Cuisine Indian

Prep Time 45

Cook Time 18

Servings regular sized cupcakes

Ingredients

For Basic Eggless Vanilla CupCake Batter

1 1/4 cup All Purpose Flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp Baking soda
pinch of Salt
3/4 cup granulated Sugar
1 cup minus 2 tbsp Milk
1/3 cup Oil
1 tbsp White Vinegar
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
Nuts to garnish on top (Optional)

Instructions

Making the Basic Vanilla Cupcake batter

Stir together milk and vinegar and set aside for 5 minutes. The milk should be curdled by the end of it.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside.
Once milk is curdled, whisk oil, vanilla extract and sugar into it till well combined and runny.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Mix till smooth. Do not overmix. A little lumpy is fine as long as everything is mixed well.

Making the colours (Orange Colour)

Juice the grated carrot with 1 tbsp of water. I used a regular Indian mixer to do this.
Strain the carrot juice to get the fibrous part out.
Keep 2 tbsp of orange juice aside.

Making the colours (Green Colour)

Juice the spinach leaves with 1 tbsp of water
Strain the spinach juice.
Keep 2 tbsp of green juice aside.

Making the colours (Red/Pink Colour)

Juice the strawberries with 1 tbsp of water
Keep 2 tbsp of red/pink juice aside.

Making the colours (Blue Colour)

Place frozen blueberries in a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 30 second intervals till the blueberries burst and the juice starts oozing out. It took me 3 intervals.
Allow it to cool.
Strain the blueberries juice.
Keep 2 tbsp of blue juice aside.
Putting it all together

Method

Divide the basic Vanilla cupcake batter into 5 cups. I scooped out 4 heaped tsps per cup.
To the batter in the first cup add 1 tbsp of carrot juice and mix well to get orange coloured batter.
To the batter in the second cup add 1 tbsp of spinach juice and mix well to get green coloured batter.
To the batter in the third cup add 1 tbsp of strawberry juice and mix well to get pink coloured batter.
To the batter in the fourth cup add 1 tbsp of blueberry juice and mix well to get blue coloured batter.
Keep the batter in the fifth cup uncoloured. This can be used to improve consistency in the other batters or to get a cream layer in the cupcake.
Add more juice to improve colour adjusting the consistency so that it doesnt become watery.
There are many ways of making the cupcakes clourful.
The easiest method is to layer different coloured batters one on top of the other in the cupcake liner.
Alternatively place separators in the paper liner and pour different coloured batters in each section.
I started out making the separators using card. I made a 4 section one and a 3 section like that. But I found it problematic because the batters bled into other sections easily.
Then the hubby gave an idea which turned out to be brilliant. Use crackers/biscuits as dividers. I had Parle-G gluco biscuits on hand and used them. I got 2 sections and 4 section ones using this method.
Preheat the oven to 350°F
Whatever the method fill the liners to 3/4 full and bake at 350°F for 18 minutes.
Cool the cupcakes in the pan for 5 minutes before removing them onto a wire rack and allowing them to cool completely.
Decorate with frosting or ganache as desired. The cupcakes turned out so wonderfully coloured that I did not want to cover that up at all.