Rainbow Cream Cheese Cupcakes

This is a simple cream cheese pound cake recipe with a little variation - the inside is multi-coloured. I was about to write this as being for the kids, but I sure enjoy a rainbow cake as much as any kid, and I'm nearly 30. The frosting is a simple buttercream with a couple drops of blue food coloring, but I left the decoration to the "kids" (read: the man of the house) so it tastes better than it looks in the picture. Buttercream frosting is easy to handle and keeps its shape, so this is not only easy to make, but interactive enough to be fun.


Ingredients:

3 sticks butter, softened

8 oz cream cheese, softened

3 cups sugar

6 eggs, at room temperature

3 cups sifted cake flour

1 1/2 tbsp vanilla

Confectioner's sugar

Three (or more) colors of food coloring.

 Directions:

1) In a large bowl, cream together butter, cream cheese and sugar until smooth and fluffy.

2) Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each.

3) Add flour a little at a time, beating until smooth. Add vanilla.

4) Separate batter into 5 small bowls, then add food coloring to each to make five colors. (I usually go the standard route – red, yellow, green, blue, purple.)

5) Prepare a cupcake pan, inserting cupcake papers into each of the muffin holes, and then use a spoon to ladle the batter carefully into each cup. Then, alternate colors by ladling different colors of batter on top of each other. The cups should be about 3/4 of the way full.

6) Bake in the oven at 180 Celsius for about 30 minutes or until you can stick in a toothpick and pull it out clean.

Tips:

* This method can be used for any kind of pound cake - if you want to make rainbow colored bundt cake, layer cake, etc just spoon the batter into the cake tin the same way you might have spooned it into the cups.