Patriotic Cupcakes

For the Fourth of July we were headed to some close friends' house for a parade, bbq and fireworks.  I decided that whipping up a red, white and blue dessert would be my contribution.  Cupcakes are fun, quick and easily customizable, plus who doesn't love cupcakes?  So I gathered my helpers and made some super yummy vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting.  But like I said, I wanted to make a red, white and blue dessert, so these were no plain vanilla cupcakes.  I split both the cupcake batter and the frosting into three separate bowls each.  I dyed one blue, one red and left one white.

This creative dessert would work with your favorite vanilla cupcake recipe or even a boxed mix and can be customized with any colors you want!  Once the colors were to my liking (I use gel colors because it is easier to get a true red without diluting the batter or using ten times as much food coloring as necessary) I layered the three batters into the cupcake liners.  Sometimes I started with white, other times blue or red.  Sometimes the colors were on top of each other and sometimes next to each other.  The more creative and crazy, the better!

When the cupcakes cooled, I frosted them with my three colored frostings.  I filled the piping bag with all three colors at once, side by side.  The result was triple swirled frosting!  The colors did start to mix a little, so I think next time I will try another technique.  I've seen a couple that I am dying to try.