Rainbow Cupcakes

Its time for Spring!  Nicks school has its Spring Program and Party tomorrow (next week is Spring Break!).  I was lucky enough to beat out the other 23 moms and get the lucky cupcake slot.  Thats right.  I'm not bringing napkins or fruit or cheese this time - all important items for a party of course BUT, the cupcakes are always a hit with the kids.

So I hit up some of my favorite cuppy sites and planned these out last week.  Nothing says Spring like a rainbow right?

I went with the random rainbow version where the layers are kind of swirled together but there are still layers.  I didn't want it to look too perfect, although that cake looks fab.

Mix up a white cake - must be white.  Yellow cake will make your dye look funny.  I used a combo of the regular food coloring and the neon set.  There are 2 neon sets, this one just had more of my favorite colors in it.

Separate the batter out into equal cups and start coloring!

Once you have the colors you want, start layering.  I did pink on the bottom and built up.  You could put purple on the bottom and go up the rainbow.  I decided to be different.

Bake according to the box.  I noticed that I had to cook mine a little longer because they weren't finishing in the time on the box.  But don't leave them too long....

Mine are a little browner on top.  The second batch was perfect though.  You can see the layers here.  It was after 10pm and I was trying to get a decent shot.

Time to make toppers!  Pinwheels.  I grabbed some spring papers from my stash - mostly Echo Park.

I used Stickles to color in the centers.  Buttons, brads and anything else were out of the question since these were going to be eaten by 3 and 4 year olds.  I don't need a mother freaking out because her kid ate a brad.....

And by 2 am I was ready to hot glue gun the candy sticks to the backs.