Chantilly lace and a pretty face: Tie Dye Cupcakes with multicolored frosting

Today was my cousin Olivia's birthday, and I LOVE Olivia. I lay in bed at night thinking about what I should get her and what would make her happy. She turned 12 this year and is rocking the Ames Middle School.

My mom and I decided to give Olivia one of the first prototypes for our new craft business. So my mom made the tote while I designed and created the felt cat.

I'd say that's a pretty sweet library bag for a 12 year old!

Much more on our business to come in the days ahead... But today I took a craft time-out to make some cupcakes for our family birthday party for Olivia.

I had made tie dye cupcakes before for my dad's birthday. I only made 4 of them though, not the whole batch, because I didn't know if my dad would like them. Turns out he LOVED them, and I wished I had made a whole tin. This time I was ready to tackle 12 rainbow bright cupcakes.

I started with a normal cake batter and divided it into 5 bowls.

After I colored each bowl like a rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue. I learned last time that purple just gets lost in blue. No point in having both colors.

Then I spooned equal amounts of the blue batter into each cupcake paper. An easy way to make sure you're using the same amount is to use a cookie scoop. Make sure to not overfill because it's easier to go back and put more of one color in each hole than it is to take some out.

Then came a scoop of green.

Yellow, orange, red... you get the idea.

They got slightly overfilled... That's a little bit like being "over-served." nothing inherently bad about it...

They came out of the oven looking perfect!

The frosting was the part I hadn't tried before. Last time I made the rainbow cupcakes I just frosted them in white. This time I took red, yellow, green and blue food coloring and painted a thick line on the inside of the pastry bag. Then I carefully spooned the frosting in the bag.