You will need:*white cake batter, homemade or boxed
*cupcake liners
*pink and/or red food color
*heavy whipping cream
*chocolate chips or marshmallows
*sprinkles if ya like
*paper & pens to keep track
scrumdilly-do it:Whip up your cake batter like you would for any old cake. the lighter the cake batter, the brighter your pinks and/reds will be. Use only egg-whites if ya wanna get super fancy.
Divide your batter into at least four small bowls. You can of course do more but four works nicely to turn this into a science and/or math adventure. We're going to make a graph of sorts.
Pink and red food color are very similar. You almost can't even tell the difference but it still may be fun to use both. Set up your experiment by writing onto some small scraps the names of the colors if you are using both. On two additional cards, write out the number 1 and the number 2. One for each card. This will be your graph.
In the row of bowls marked with a number 1, add 1 drop of pink food color into the bowl labeled pink and one drop into the bowl labeled red. Add two drops to each bowl in the number 2 row, make sure to keep your pink in your pink row and your red in your red row.
Have your child mix up each batch of colored batter. Talk about color mixing and how red can turn into pink. Ask which bowl do they think will look the darkest? The lightest? The reddest, etc. If you have more batter, continue with adding drops of food color. If you only have one color of food color, mix a bowl for each drop. One bowl will be for one drop, one for two drops, one for three and so on.
After you have finished with the mixing part of the experiment, make your rainbow cakes. Fill your muffin pan with cupcake liners and add a dollop or two of each variation until your cups are three quarters of the way full. Ask your child if he or she thinks you will be able to see the differences once they are baked. Have them draw a picture of what they think the cakes will look like while you wait for them to bake. Bake according to your recipe.
When cupcakes are finished baking, top each cupcake with three or four chocolate chips and wait until they get a bit melty. When they are melty, spread to cover the tops and allow to set. You can also do this with a marshmallow instead or add both!
While cupcakes are cooling, chill your mixing bowl for the cream by placing it into your freezer (this will help speed the whipping process). Once the cakes are cool, allow your child to whip up the cream using an electric hand held mixer. Supervised, of course! Add just a smidge of sugar, one tablespoon per cup of cream is perfect. Top each cupcake with a dollop of whipped cream and add some sprinkles for fun.
Keep a couple unfrosted and cut them in half so that you and your children can see the magic that is a rainbow cake. See how many variations of pink they can count. If you like, chop up a cupcake and make a parfait using whipped cream or vanilla yogurt. Either way, make sure no cupcake goes to waste!
Happy almost Valentine's Day!
Hey Jekky-cake, saw your cupcakes on the Crafty Crow. You sure do get around.
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