He Cooks And She Bakes: Tie-Dye Cupcakes

My precious cousin Tara turned 21 a few weeks ago. We were in Florida visiting when the big day happened. We had a fantastic birthday dinner and a ladies night out! Some of our Oregon family members were visiting as well, which made it even more special. The Gomez family (my dad's side) is very close, yet we live all over the country and overseas. We all started out in beautiful Oregon...

...but some of us have moved to Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Japan. So needless to say, we love it when we can be together!

My cousin Tessa and I made cupcakes for the occasion. Tess and I are both pretty creative and artistic, so we were having a lot of fun trying to figure out what to do. Tara wanted vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting - and SPRINKLES! Tessa mentioned tie-dye cupcakes (her good friend Megan had recently made them) and I had just seen tie-dye cupcakes on a great blog called Can You Stay For Dinner? We decided on multi-colored frosting as well (her friend Megan had done this on her tie-dye cupcakes and they looked oh so snazzy!). For the love, we had found our cupcakes!

This is Tess and Megan by the way....

Tie Dye Cupcakes

Source: Martha Stewart Vanilla Cupcakes & Can You Stay For Dinner?
Yield: 3 dozen cupcakes

For the vanilla cupcakes:

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
6 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down sides of bowl as needed, until well blended. Mix in vanilla. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with milk in two batches, beating until combined after each.

My Uncle Warren and I did!

The birthday girl wanted sprinkles, so we added some sprinkles to the batter!

Time for some color! Divide batter evenly into 4 bowls. Fold in desired food coloring. Helpful Hint: don't stir too much - you will end up with a bread-like cupcake texture.

Layer spoonfuls of each colored batter into the cupcake liners until 3/4 full (we did a bit more).

Use a toothpick to swirl the batter a few times. Helpful Hint: use a clean toothpick every time and don't swirl too much or the colors will blend together and create an overall brown color.

Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until tops spring back when lightly touched, about 20 minutes. Let cool in tins on wire racks.

Quick disclaimer: I normally make homemade frosting. But every once in a while, I use the store bought kind. This was one of those times! :)

For the frosting:

Four 16 oz. containers vanilla frosting

One 13 oz. container marshmallow creme

Combine frosting and marshmallow creme in electric mixer. Adding marshmallow creme is a nifty trick I learned from Paula Deen. It pretty much makes the frosting taste divine and gives it a great texture.