Rainbow Cupcakes

What's St. Patrick's Day without a leprechaun chasing a rainbow to find a pot of gold?  At least that's how I'm justifying serving up these cupcakes today's for my daughter's class!  This day is about more than just pinching your neighbor who's not wearing green.  Ok, admittedly perhaps I like St. Patty's more than the average person, but I can't help it.  It's in my blood.  Literally.

Anyway, back to the cupcakes.  I happened upon this recipe during one of our many snow days earlier in the year and knew I had to give it a shot!  It's one of those tricked out cake mix recipes - love those!  But...it is a wee bit (there's the Irish) labor intensive, so be warned.  I think this is a great idea for any springtime event - rainbows = spring, right?   As with any recipe, there are usually multiple variations floating around on the web.  I found the one I liked on With Sprinkles on Top, one of my favorite blogs.  NOTE:  She made buttercream icing for her cupcakes.  Since these were for a school class, I went the easy route and used canned frosting.  Chances are nine year olds are not food critics.

Rainbow Cupcakes

(Adapted from Withsprinklesontop.net)

1 box white cake mix (plus ingredients needed for the box mix, like eggs and vegetable oil)
Food coloring (I used Wilton gel colors: violet, sky blue, leaf green, orange, yellow, Christmas red)
24 cupcake liners

1. Make cake mix according to directions on box.
2. Divide the batter into six bowls. (I used 1 cup of batter per bowl.)
3. Color each bowl of batter with a different dye.
4. Line cupcake pans with liners and spoon a LITTLE of each color batter into the liners. I started with purple and worked my way up to red. Don’t worry about them not being perfectly balanced or neat, they will turn out regardless!  Remember - ROY G. BIV!  (Rainbow acronym)
5. Bake according to the recommendations on the box.

Decorate!

I found cute shamrock candies by Wilton at Michael's as well as gold pearl dust and lightly sprinkled that on the frosting.  (What's a rainbow without gold?)