The Last Minute Cute Cupcake: Food Coloring

In continuation of spontaneous cupcakespiration, today we will explore the fun-filled options of...

Food Coloring

If you have food coloring, you can bake a spontaneous batch of cupcakes that can apply to any occasion! I'm not just talking about through colorful icing swirls.

The awe-factor is easy to achieve, just by adding food coloring to the cake part of the cupcake. You can dye it all one color - like green for St. Patrick's Day (or Christmas!), blue for Hanukkah, or tie-dye for birthdays! Here I made these "Hippie" cupcakes for 4th of July last year.

The trick is to remember that regular eggs will give any light-colored cake a yellow hue - so, for true colors, use an egg white recipe. Also, through trial and error, I realize that the dye adds an extra component to the dry mix that thus needs extra moisture. Just a smidgen bit of extra oil!

Also, it helps if you swirl the various batter colors together. Otherwise, the three colors won't combine to create new colors on their own!