And no, these aren’t Joseph’s but are the very, very clever product of my friend Sam’s warp-speed creativity – she is to home industries what Leonardo was to the renaissance; completely unstoppable. Anyway, she happened to see a picture of a rainbow cake during a work presentation and promptly went home and concocted a recipe for cupcakes. And, lucky me, she very kindly brought in a dozen of them to celebrate my daughter’s 5 month birthday on Tuesday 
. The gorgeous thing is, they taste just as phenomenal as they look – so next time you want to cheer yourself (or someone else) up, whip up a batch of these. I defy you to still feel miz after you tuck into one of them, and I say that as someone who has had the crappiest of crap days! They are little dollops of happiness with sprinkles on the top, and, honestly, what could be nicer than that?
| ¼ cup corn flour |
| 1 cup water |
| 1 cup sunflower oil |
| 1 ¼ cups sugar |
| 3 free-range (or better still, organic) eggs |
| 2 tsp vanilla essence |
| 1 ¾ cup flour |
| 3 tsp baking powder |
| Pinch of salt |
| 5 different colours gel food colouring (e.g. purple, sky blue, mint green, red and yellow) |
| For the icing: |
| 100g woodenspoon white margarine |
| 500g icing sugar |
| 2 tbs lemon juice (you can add more or less according to your taste) |
| 2 tsp vanilla essence |
| A little milk |
Serving Size : Makes 24 cupcakes
METHOD
| 1. | In a separate bowl, dissolve the corn flour in the water, add the oil and put aside. |
| 2. | Beat the eggs and sugar together til light and fluffy, add vanilla essence and beat well. Add sifted dry ingredients bit by bit mixing in between additions. |
| 3. | Fold in the cornflour, oil and water mixture and then beat the batter for 2 mins. |
| 4. | Divide the mixture into 5 separate bowls and add different food colours to each of the 5 bowls (I use 2 to 3 drops of the gel food colouring). Mix the colouring in each of the 5 bowls with separate spoons till well combined and till the batter is uniformly coloured. |
| 5. | Put 24 muffin sized, paper cases into 2 x 12 muffin trays. |
| 6. | Layer the colours by adding approx 1 tsp of each colour in layers into each paper case. I generally work with one colour at a time , eg add 1 tsp of purple to each paper case till purple is finished… then add approx 1 tsp of blue to each paper case till blue is finished etc ( I do this so that I ensure each cupcake gets all 5 colours) till all the colours are layered into the paper cases. You can vary the colour layer order based on your personal pref. |
| 7. | Bake at 180° C for 12 to 15 mins until a skewer comes out clean. |
| 8. | Allow cupcakes to cool completely before icing them. |
| 9. | Cream margarine and icing sugar together adding the icing sugar bit by bit, in between additions of icing sugar, add the lemon juice and vanilla essence. Use the milk to thin out the icing if required, be careful to add small amounts of milk at a time until the desired consistency is achieved… |
| 10. | Ice each cupcake with the white icing, and use rainbow coloured sprinkles to decorate. Enjoy… |
Gilz on October 10, 2009
Scrummy.
Kanga on October 10, 2009
Thanks Gilz! And you should see how gorgeous they look – my picture just doesn’t do them justice…
Sam on October 12, 2009
Hey Celia… Just spotted a small mistake in the recipe for the cupcakes. For the cupcake Batter, it is 1& 1/4 cup sugar, not icing sugar… Sorry man… hope no one tried them with icing sugar yet?? BIG OOOPS SORRY!!!!!!!!
Sam on October 12, 2009
Opps again the eggs are missing from the ingredients too…
Kanga on October 13, 2009
Whoops, thanks Sam – have corrected the recipe! Thanks very much for letting me know