somewhere over the cupcake.

(originally from august 2nd 2011.)

good day, hungry readers. a thousand apologies for my lengthy absence. should you require an outlet for the anger caused by my lack of blogging, please direct them towards pizza pizza or the law school admissions test. between the logic games and the large-3-toppings, recreational cooking time has been hard to come by. but alas, (earwax) i am back in action and i give you: 

rainbow cupcakes.

but before i get to the recipe, in true LSAT form, i present you with the following logical dilemma:

• i hate icing. 
• i hate cake.
• i love cupcakes. 

yeah, i don’t really understand it either. but calm down, take your jaw off the floor, i don’t mean all cake. i mean pre-made store-bought cake like the kind you get from grocery stores. to anyone who has served me this cake in my life and watched me soldier through it, i’m sorry to tell you that i hated every second and only complied so as not to hurt your feelings. 

please note: mccain cakes, this does not apply to you. keep up the good work! see you next time i have an emotional breakdown. 

so the reason behind this fervent dislike of grocery store cake is their icing. while i’m not a fan of icing at all, there are some kinds that i can stomach with minimal gagging. this variety of icing is not among them. usually, it is so hideously thick that even if the cake itself was satisfactory, you’d never know. no offense or disrespect intended towards the fine grocery store bakers of the world but COME ON! who comes up with these cake-to-icing ratios, a council of obese american children?!

alright, rant over. in summary, i do not eat cake unless it has been prepared at home and even then, it must have no icing. cut to a young me at every birthday party i have ever attended enjoying a rice krispie square while the children around me shovel mounds of that trash into their gobs. 

in contrast to all of the above, i love cupcakes. homemade ones, mind you. i love making them, i love looking at them, i love eating them (after i scrape off most of the icing), in short, i can’t live if living is without them, mariah. 

out of all the cupcake recipes in my arsenal and the ones i have copied from my frequent viewings of cupcake wars, rainbow cupcakes are my favourite and the most visually impressive. so this weekend for the cesareo family picnic, they were the perfect choice for my potluck contribution. when there are a hundred hungry italians to please, you don’t bring your B game. unless you want to be strangled with piano wire or gunned down at a toll-booth. 

so here’s the procedure: 

because the post-batter-making process is so lengthy (and even though it physically hurts me to give this instruction) i’ll give you the short version of this recipe which includes venturing to your favourite grocer and buying a box of white cake mix instead of making your own batter from scratch. don’t judge me, i decided to make these at about 10pm the night before the picnic and a homemade batter was not in the scopa cards. 

the cake mix MUST BE WHITE. not yellow, not off-white. WHITE. got it? lovely. onward!

you begin by preparing the cake mix as per its instructions on the box. then you divide it evenly between 6 bowls. next, you add a different colour of food colouring to each bowl. 

i used purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. you’re going to need a lot of food colouring to make the batter bright enough so that it doesn’t fade during baking. my rule of thumb is to add food colouring until you think you’re on a psychedelic trip. groovy. 

so by this point, unless you’re using a paste food colouring - you’ll notice that the mixture is a bit runny for layering. to rectify this SERIOUS problem, add a tablespoon of flour to each bowl. now, since the flavouring in the recipe won’t be equipped to handle the extra flour, you’ll also want to add a half teaspoon of vanilla (or lemon, whichever flavour you have) extract. 

next, you spoon the batter into muffin tins one colour at a time as they would appear in a rainbow.

since you’ve added flour to the recipe, these cupcakes shouldn’t rise too much, so feel free to fill them over the recommended 3/4 full.

this is a very lengthy process, especially if you’re working with six colours, as i was. here are some tips for maximizing your time: 

• use a piping bag or ziploc bag to dispense your batter
• do one colour at a time. meaning, do the bottom layer of purple through the whole muffin tin and then move onto the next. otherwise you’ll end up with leftover batter and cupcake batter in the garbage is something i will not stand for.
• secure the help of a few trusty servants. if you do not have servants, feel free to use your family. have them follow behind with the next colour as you add the previous one or lay palm leaves at your feet as you make your way about the kitchen.

then you stick these in the oven at whatever temperature the box says and wait. 

don’t be alarmed if some of the lower colours bubble to the surface, through trial and error, i have found this unavoidable and learned to move on with my life. with the help of extensive therapy.  

they’re ready to come out of the oven when you can stick a toothpick in them and have it come out with no batter on it. 

scoop ‘em out and let them cool. 

side note: my dad thought it’d be cool to make one of the cupcakes tie-dye by stirring the batter pre-oven. he was wrong. it was hideous. 

it reminded me of that kid in kindergarten who would mix all the different paints together. as a self-diagnosed perfectionist, this made me cringe and had to be immediately thrown away. down my throat. 

after the cupcakes were cooled, i piped some whipped icing onto them (obviously leaving several uniced for myself) and topped them with sprinkles. 

here’s how they turned out:

the minis on the inside

and the large ones on the outside

*sigh* i have traveled the world and seen its many wonders, but never before have i encountered such beauty. 

and on top of that, they’re delicious! mind you, this may be a cognitive deception caused by the vibrant colours. but hey - whatever works! 

the reviews:

my nonna - “mamma mia! i neva see sometin so byataful. i gotta make-a dis for my friend at homa deep next tersday! oh my guy - i lova them” 

to translate: wow! i have never seen something so beautiful. i’ve got to make this for my friends at home depot next thursday. oh my god, i love them!

okay, she never said any of that. but she and everyone else who helped these cupcakes disappear so quickly seemed to enjoy them about as much as we italians enjoy yelling at soccer games on tv. 

in summary, these are great cupcakes and they’re not too difficult to make if you use a premade mix. kids especially seem to like them because of the bright colours. make them for your next special occaision: birthdays, bar mitzvahs, graduations, gay pride, a tuesday, whatever! 

i don’t know if i’ll ever develop a love towards pre-made cakes from the grocery store, but making these cupcakes from a store-bought mix is definitely a step in the right direction. is an eventual co-existence possible? maybe. all i know is that there’s a long, delicious, rainbow brick road on the way to finding out.

thanks for reading :)