Rainbow Cupcakes (Vegan!)

Last weekend, on a whim, I decided it was time to make rainbow cupcakes.

This is something I'd been thinking about for years, but didn't feel motivated to make a reality until now. I think it's all the lovely cupcakes and cakes that people have been posting to my Facebook wall lately. Friends -- you really know how to inspire a girl, apparently! It turned out to be so much easier than I always thought it would be, so I'm going to share the recipe with you. It's a vegan recipe but easily translated into one that includes dairy (not that you'd miss it -- you wouldn't).



RECIPE;

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line cupcake pan (cupcake liners work better than butter/oil, believe me)

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegan butter (I used Earth Balance ... I know, I need to come up with a more environmentally friendly alternative, because I feel really guilty about using it)
2 eggs worth of egg replacer -- I use Bob's Red Mill, but any of them are fine, I'm sure
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup almond milk (or soy, or whatever)
Food coloring (I used red, orange, yellow, green & blue)

Directions:
Mix the sugar & butter in a mixer.
Add egg replacer slowly ("one egg at a time") followed by vanilla & mix until smooth.
In another bowl, mix flour & baking soda. Add slowly to mixer, and mix.
Add almond milk, and mix until smooth.

Next, the fun part: roughly divide the mix into five separate bowls and mix in food coloring! After this, I simply took a spoon and went color by color (red first, then orange, etc) spooning approximately a tablespoon of each color into each cupcake liner. I had to get my hands dirty because sometimes things wouldn't go according to plan and I'd have to adjust a bit, but really, this is akin to a mad scientist kind of haphazardly playing around: do it however seems right to you. At the end, I had a little left over in each bowl, so I used that as an opportunity to add a splash of color to the top that might not show through.



Bake for 20-25 minutes or so -- depending on the oven. Mine definitely needed 25 minutes.



These cupcakes are SO moist and so gorgeous. They literally fall apart in your hands -- SO GOOD!



Confession: they lasted only one evening. Yep. We ate them all that night. Highly recommended!