Taste the Rainbow

This blog post is an explosion of flavor, color and Pinterestness.  Yup, that's right . . . I'm talking RAINBOW CAKE.  So. Intense.  

I combined a few pins to make a treat for a friend's birthday.  I made the experiment a family activity and it was actually a lot of fun.  

To start, I just used a Pillsbury white cake mix.  Even though I usually use egg whites for white cake, I used whole eggs since we were dying the batter anyway.  I also added a capful (about 1 teaspoon) of almond extract.  That is the secret to amazing white cake.  A little goes a long way!

Once the mix was well, mixed, we divided it into four parts.  We dyed ours red, yellow, green and blue. My kiddo really liked mixing the colors in.

Time to pour into the containers.  I wanted to make a "cupcake in a jar" for my friend, so we poured the batter into two jars: one for my friend and one for the kiddo.   No need to buy new jars, by the way . . . the jar I used was actually a parmesan cheese jar!  Obviously, I washed it out thoroughly and painted the lid (see below).  The kiddo's was a jelly jar.  

We did a few spoonfuls of each color in each jar until it was to the halfway point.

We set the jars on a cookie sheet and popped them in the oven for about 15 minutes.  We had lots of leftover batter so we did some cupcakes, too.

Once the jars were out of the oven and cooled, I had to pull some excess cake off the top to make room for frosting.  Check out this link for an awesome buttercream frosting recipe coupled with a recipe for Sugar Cookie Bars that will change your life.  When I say change your life, I mean that you will eat these bars nonstop and eventually contract Wilford Brimley-style Diabeetus.

Don't forget to add 1/2 a teaspoon of almond extract to the frosting!

Sprinkles make everything better.  Even Diabeetus.

On to the crafty portion of this project . . . 

I painted the lid with Krylon paint in Turquoise.  They have these new cute little cans called Short Cuts.  That way, you can get whatever crazy colors you want without having to get a huge can (that I never finish off).  I then wet embossed the top with a "Happy Birthday" stamp and red embossing glitter.  I never use loose glitter . . . too dang messy!  You get the same effect with embossing glitter but with less mess.

I glitter embossed a chipboard "K" too (the first letter of my friend's name).

Now, to the FAIL portion of this blog . . . 

I froze the cupcakes so I could give some to another friend for her b-day.  I had seen some rainbow frosting on Pinterest and thought I would try it.  (Looking at the pin again, I wonder why in the heck I wanted to do it!)  So, I followed the instructions and . . . the frosting looked gross.  I have a problem when there is so much dye in frosting that it stains your teeth . . . no one wants ROYGBIV teeth.  So, I squeezed all of the frosting out of the bag and back into the bowl of white frosting.  To salvage it, I folded it in, trying to make the color lighter.  As you can see from the picture above, it didn't.  Yuck.  Oh well.  You can't win them all.