Rain + Sun = Rainbows...

both my kids love looking for rainbows after the rain, or during the rain...

and we always try to remind them of the promise of a rainbow...

God's promise of protection, his promise to NEVER flood the entire earth again...

so when I signed up to bring cupcakes to Wilson's preschool graduation he suggested that I make rainbow cupcakes...

fun times...

I've made a rainbow/polka dot cake before and the dramatic part is cutting into the cake and seeing all the colors...

well...in case you forgot, there is no cutting into cupcakes...and I don't like to put extra work into something unless people know I've done the work...

so I needed to find a way to make rainbow cupcakes and have everyone see all the work I did...

I googled rainbow cupcakes and a few images came up, and one had the cupcakes not in the cupcake papers  but in wax paper...

GENIUS...you can see all the colors...

so I cut enough wax paper squares for the cupcakes (26)...

then formed them around the bottom of a small cup and then sat them in the cupcake/muffin tin...perfect fit

then mix up your cake batter (I used a simple yellow cake mix with a simple cake mix dr. recipe...recipe at the bottom of the blog)...you NEED to use either a yellow cake or white cake recipe...

divide your batter into the number of colors that you want/need to make your rainbow or polka dots...

and color each the color you want

I had planned on 5 colors...

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue...

very rainbow like...

and it wasn't until I had the cake all mixed up that I got out all of my colors only to discover I was missing my Red and Yellow food coloring...

so I left one batch the "natural" color of the yellow cake batter and then left red out entirely...

thinking...

"They're preschoolers, they won't notice that the rainbow cupcakes are missing red..."

then using a small spoon or cookie scoop, start filling your cupcake papers with one scoop of each color

then bake per directions...

remove from pans to cool and then frost with the color frosting you want...

I had planned on making 5 different colors of frosting and then once I realized I didn't have the red or yellow I just asked Wilson what color he wanted...he said green (I was actually a little surprised, he's a blue sort of boy)...

so I frosted them all green...

and I was also going to make little crayons out of fondant to top them all with...but then the boy got sick...and wasn't even going to make it to his preschool graduation...so I just left good enough alone...kept one cupcake at home for the sick little boy and delivered the rest to the little graduates...and it was raining for the "outside ceremony" they had planned for the graduation...perfect cupcakes for a rain soaked party...

picked up Wilson's graduation cap and school goodies and came home to "celebrate" his own personal graduation...

little boy bummed that he's not with all his friends...

and finding it rather silly that mom will only let him eat his cupcake if he wears his graduation cap...

are those eyes just melting you right now???

"hmm...mom, did you forget the red?"...

okay so preschoolers might notice if you don't have red in the rainbow!

but it's still good...can't believe that my sweet little boy is going off to kindergarten next year!

Easy Peasy Yellow Cake

1 yellow cake mix

8 oz, 1 stick butter melted

1 cup whole milk or half & half

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Mix together all the ingredients on low speed for 1 minute, scrape down sides and mix on medium for 3 minutes...

bake per directions on the back of cake box for whatever size pan you're baking your cake/cupcakes in...

frost with vanilla butter cream or chocolate butter cream frosting.