These Rainbow Cupcakes are seriously the BEST rainbow cupcakes EVER! Super easy to make and SUCH a show-stopping dessert for any occasion!
Life’s crazy right now, but you don’t need me to tell you that.
There’s a lot of uncertainty and confusion, with news changing by the minute and panic rising – it’s a lot to take on for sure.
Thankfully, things have been pretty okay around here. I have been laughing my booty off on TikTok (not just for 12-year olds, thankyouverymuch) and catching up on a huge list of books to read! Work-wise, I’m grateful to all of you wonderful people who are baking my recipes! It’s been fantastic seeing your photos of these gorgeous creations. I’ve loved every minute of it!
But whether you’re staying afloat or not, now more than ever we need some joy in our lives! Enter: Rainbow Cupcakes. How can you not be joyful when you look at these cuties?!
Rainbow cupcakes are nothing new, but boy, are they adorable and cheerful! I posted a version long ago on my site but wanted to resurrect it to show you how simple they are to make. I just think it transforms a humble cupcake into something extraordinary and so very cool. Plus, now that many of you are also stay-at-home parents and teachers, it’s a great project to take on with kids of all ages.
To start, you’ll want to grab a box of white or vanilla cake mix. Yep, cake mix. For one, it’s the easiest and most readily available in these times (especially since flour is now in a national shortage apparently) and it consistently produces a moist, delicious product. Of course, you’re welcome to use your own favorite vanilla or white cake recipe if you desire.
You’ll make the cake mix and stir in my secret ingredient for making cakes extraordinary: instant dry pudding mix powder. It really adds great moisture and texture, making the cupcakes ultra fluffy and soft. Delicious and easy!
Then you’ll divide your batter among 6 bowls and tint each bowl a different color of the rainbow. I like using gel food coloring by Wilton because it is SUPER concentrated and isn’t as liquidy as regular food coloring.
It’s as simple as layering the colored batter into the muffin cups, stacking color on top of color. The key for bright, vibrant, clear layers is DO NOT SWIRL! Swirling the batter muddies the colors and it is super easy for people to get carried away marbling the batter. My version creates a still marbled-looking effect with cool layers of color.
After they bake, simply frost, eat and enjoy! You can decorate with rainbow sprinkles (my personal favorite) or these cute sour rainbow belt candies I arced like a rainbow on top 🙂 So adorable!
Enjoy!!
Best Ever Rainbow Cupcakes
Ingredients
- One box white or vanilla cake mix
- 1 cup water or milk
- 3 large eggs
- 1/3 cup vegetable or canola oil
- One (3.4 oz) box instant vanilla pudding mix just the dry mix, do not prepare the pudding
- Gel food coloring in rainbow colors
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream or milk
- 3-4 cups confectioners' sugar
- Rainbow sprinkles or sour rainbow candy belts for decoration
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° degrees F. Line 1 muffin tin with 12 paper liners; set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat the cake mix, water, eggs, oil, and dry pudding mix powder together with a handheld electric mixer on medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes. Portion the batter evenly among 6 small bowls. Tint each bowl a different color of the rainbow. For my cupcakes, I used red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. For best results, I like concentrated gel food coloring for this.
- Spoon a heaping teaspoonful of purple batter into the bottom of a muffin cup. Top with a teaspoon of blue, then a teaspoon of green, then a teaspoon of yellow, etc. Or, you can alternate cupcakes, starting with red on bottom and ending with purple on top like I did. Do NOT swirl the colors together. It's okay if the colors don't completely line up; this is what makes them look unique and cool! Swirling, however, may muddy the colors.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean or with moist, but not wet, crumbs. Cool completely.
- For the buttercream: In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and vanilla until smooth. Gradually add in the confectioners' sugar, one cup at a time, alternating with the heavy cream until frosting is light and fluffy.
- Pipe or spread the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes. Garnish with rainbow sprinkles or sour rainbow candy belts cut in half and arced onto the cupcake frosting.
These are seriously SO beautiful, cheerful and fun! I know you’re going to love them!
Want more cheerful treats? Check out these recipes!
Unicorn Rainbow Cheesecake Bars
Have a super sweet day!
xo, Hayley
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Amanda says
This is exactly what I need to see right now–Color! This recipe along with that extremely creamy cake batter pie from a few days ago must be coming straight from the Rainbow Brite recipe box. Thanks for the positivity, Haley, and I’m glad you weren’t on one of your Carnival Cruise excursions that you have posted about in the past when all of this chaos began (…although I miss the recipes you came up with afterwards). Everytime I read through your posts, I think, “wow, what an optimistic person to have in this world.” You must make a great friend to have during these times 🙂
thedomesticrebel says
Aw Amanda, thank you for the kind comment! Hopefully I can be on a cruise when everything goes back to normal, but in the meantime I’m enjoying creating cheerful recipes for people like you! Stay safe! xo.
Stephanie Wood says
Hi I’m in the UK and struggling to find a vanilla pudding mix, we have butterscotch flavour, strawberry or banana..would any of these be nice or ruin the flavour or is there an alternative I can use?
My sister loves all things bright colours so was hoping to make these for her birthday. Thank you, Steph x
thedomesticrebel says
Hi Stephanie! I would use banana personally because I love banana flavors, and because it shouldn’t color the cupcake batter any differently than vanilla. Strawberry will create more of a pinkish tinge and butterscotch will be more brassy/orange-y.
Ale says
These cupcakes made me so happy! It was so fun to make them! When I first started baking I learned with box cake mix. Now that I do everything from scratch it was so nice to just open up the box and mix! The pudding mix made it super bouncy and soft! Thanks for sharing?
thedomesticrebel says
Ale, so glad you enjoyed!
Jon says
First time baking cupcakes by myself for my friend’s 18th birthday! I had a great time, and they made a special occasion even sweeter. The jello mix makes them perfect, and I had so much fun with the colors. I’m a huge fan of the butter cream frosting too!
thedomesticrebel says
Jon, so glad you enjoyed!
Andrea Bates says
What is the best way to evenly divide the cake batter into six colors?
arianna says
I would use a little scooping measuring cup. maybe 1/2 cup or 1/3 cup each color. That’s what I did. you can adjust a little with a spoon.
arianna says
I loved the recipe. My family loved it too. I didn’t realize it was only for 12 cupcakes, however it ended up not being a problem anyway. Made 12 good sized cupcakes and 6 tinier ones for the kids. I would however recommend maybe adding almond extract to the frosting. Great recipe thanks!
Kelly says
These are incredibly cute – but they were so enormous I had trouble getting them out of the tins! Easily could have made 24, not 12. I had trouble cooking them at this size as well.
Ro says
Did anyone else find that there was way too much battere for 12 cupcakes? I used a standard cupcake tin and made 14 but it was still way too much! The tops of the cupcakes were huge. They look nothing like the picture. The whole batch is ruined.
Katie says
Should have been 24 cupcakes even the box says so, I should have listened to the box now I have overflowing cupcakes that I’m not sure I will be able to fix. So disappointed ☹️