The cupcakes that stole the show

I had no idea when I made rainbow cupcakes for James' party that it would garner such praise. They were very, very easy to make just a tad time intensive. But way less than rainbow cakes. I mean, the labor involved in that. Baking six layers of cake all dyed different colors, then leveling it and icing it? No thank you.

But I had made three color cupcakes last year for Mardi Gras (which I am shocked I did not blog about) so I thought, could I add three more colors with the same result? Worth a shot and it if they look terrible, we will just have solid color cupcakes in rainbow colors. I could live with that.

I just used two boxes of cake mix (I can't be bothered to make it from scratch) and gel food color. I split the batter into six bowls.

Then just put about a tablespoon (those are the small spoons from my flatware set) in each liner layering in the colors of the rainbow. You can see the bottom three colors here.

My trusty sidekick insisted on sitting on the island next to me to "help". Mainly he ate some old pretzels and pointed to each color saying, "Blue?".

I baked the cupcakes for the amount of time on the box and they were perfect.

I only allowed the boys to eat one to test it. Well and Dewayne got a left over purple one too.

For the icing, again I did not make it, but did pipe the store bought version on the top of the cupcakes to look like a cloud. Well that is what my sister called it. Really it looked terrible until I nestled two of each kind of animal on top and one of the toppers (which Lita at Kindly Reply customized for me to print out). Dewayne and Lauren helped me identify the animals in the pack. It was not an easy task.

And while the icing was the least attractive part, that was the only part that James ate. But don't get confused into thinking he was impressed by any of this nonsense. He would have preferred I put a plate of icing down in front of him and back slowly away.