Rainbow cupcakes

The other day I ordered some decorations for some Cinco de Mayo cupcakes I want to make.  I wanted to add some things to my order to avoid an extra fee for small orders.  I saw some colorful sprinkles and figured "you can never have too many rainbow sprinkles" and so I ordered them.  All 6 pounds of them!

So the biggest issue with the "impulse buy" of 6 pounds of sprinkles?  I actually had nothing that I needed them for.  So what is JulieBakes to do?  Bake some cupcakes, make some icing, and put those new sprinkles to good use!

I started with a chocolate cupcake because, frankly, I like chocolate cupcakes.  Then I iced them with some homemade vanilla icing because, well, B likes vanilla icing.  Then I filled a bowl with rainbow sprinkles and started dipping the cupcakes in.  (FYI, even though I don't usually like vanilla icing, I have to say that this icing on this cupcake was to.  die.  for!)

I made the Robicelli's chocolate cupcakes from the Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Cupcakes because they're really easy to make, and they're delicious!  I also had all the ingredients on hand since I made them recently again for my dad's birthday.


Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream and Rainbow Sprikles
Cupcake recipe borrowed from this recipe
Icing recipe from this recipe, and seen on the blog here and here

Cupcakes: 

Ingredients:

3/4 cups cocoa powder (I used Dutch press cocoa for super dark, chocolatey cupcakes)

2/3 cups scalding hot coffee

2/3 cups buttermilk

2/3 cups canola oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 1/3 cup all purpose flour

1 3/4 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.
Line cupcake pans with 24 liners.

Place cocoa powder in mixer bowl and pour scalding hot coffee over.

Mix on low speed until a thick paste forms and mixture stops steaming- about one minute.Like I said before, mine was not thick nor was it a paste, it was actually quite runny.  The cupcakes turned out perfectly deliciously well.

Turn mixer speed to medium.
In a measuring cup, combine buttermilk, egg, yolk, vanilla, salt and oil, and mix lightly with a fork, ensuring yolks are broken.

Slowly pour into mixer.

Stop mixer and scrape bottom well to loosen any caked on cocoa.

Reattach and turn mixer to medium, letting run one minute.

Stop mixer again.

Sift together dry ingredients and pour into wet mixture.

Mix on low speed until just combined.

Remove bowl and use scrape down the sides of the bowl, ensuring everything is mixed.

Scoop cake batter into prepared pans, filling cups 2/3 of the way.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 20-25 minutes, rotating halfway through (I don't rotate them....shhh, don't tell).

Cupcakes are done when the centers spring back when you touch them.

Remove cupcakes from oven.

Let cool completely. 

Vanilla Buttercream:

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened (but not melted!)

3-4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar, SIFTED (I used 3 cups)

¼ teaspoon table salt

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream (I used heavy cream, since thats what I had....and only ended up using 2 Tbsp)

Food coloring, optional

Directions:

Beat butter for a few minutes with a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. 
Add 3 cups of powdered sugar and turn mixer to the lowest speed (so the sugar doesn’t blow everywhere) until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter. 
Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of cream and beat for 3 minutes. 
If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.

Assembly:

When the cupcakes have cooled completely, pipe the icing on top, be sure to make a big mound of icing on the cupcake.
Fill a bowl with rainbow sprinkles.
Roll the sides of the iced cupcakes in the sprinkles.
Take some sprinkles in your hand and gently top the cupcakes with sprinkles, making sure that the entire icing is covered in sprinkles.
Shake off any extra sprinkles that have not adhered to the icing.

I chose to place the iced cupcakes in cute rainbow chevron cupcake liners (I left the original cupcake liner that the cupcake was in and just put the whole cupcake inside).
I then cut some cute chevron paper straws into thirds, and placed one in each cupcake (simply because I thought it was cute.  You definitely don't need to do that).