Tie-Dyed Cupcakes

This past Friday, April 3rd, I participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life event hosted by my university. This was the second year that my university hosted this event and it was another great time spent, especially for a good cause. In case you do not know what Relay for Life is, it is a fundraising event to help fight cancer. You can find more information here: http://www.relayforlife.org/relay/whatisrelay.

I was a member of the GeoClub & Friends team with my fellow Geography Grad students. Our team's theme of the night was Woodstock. We tie-dyed our shirts and offered face painting for $1. A fellow student created a 12 hour playlist of appropriate songs and I truly believe she missed her true calling/time as a hippie. ;)

My contribution to the night, besides participating, was bringing baked goods! Through my constant recipe browsing online, I had come across a recipe for a rainbow cake, and thought it would be perfect for our theme. Since I have developed my skills in the kitchen more over the past few years, I no longer buy box mixes. Therefore, instead of using the recipe provided on the website, I decided to use a Golden Butter Cake recipe from my Good Housekeeping Cookbook. I previously used this recipe this past summer, so I knew it was delicious and would be easy to color.

Once I mixed up the batter, I divided it up into five coffee mugs and used Wilton Food Coloring. Mixing the dye into the batter definitely worked the muscles in my arm. Once all of the batter was dyed, I spooned various amounts of each color into baking cups in the cupcake pan. I tried to figure out how I could get the tie-dyed effect. I ended up using a toothpick and swirling it around in the batter. This provided a pretty neat effect on top of the cupcake, however did not do much inside.

Overall, I think these came out pretty awesome and everyone loved them. I even had one person, that came up to our table, ask if they were edible! I think these would be perfect for a child's birthday party, since they are bright and colorful. They are also pretty simple to make, since all you need is cake batter and food coloring!