Olympic Cupcakes

When the summer Olympics were in London my son was so excited. I decided to make him some Olympic Cupcakes to celebrate. Now that the winter Olympics are in Sochi I figured it was a good time to share this easy way to make Olympic Cupcakes with all of you.

So when I made these a couple of years ago I just added the Olympic rings to the top. This time I thought I would try and step it up a notch and make the cupcake itself the colors of the rings too. Let’s just say that was a dud. After carefully spooning five layers of cake batter, which took what seemed like forever, the batter was up to the top of the cupcake liner. That meant when they cooked they turned into monster cupcakes and the colors didn’t stay in nice horizontal lines like I had hoped.

For some reason I couldn’t let go of my Olympic colored cupcake obsession so I started again. This time I thought why not make then red, white and blue. Since the icing is white I’d only have two colors of batter. I had much better luck this time.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

White cake mix
White icing
M&M’s
Food coloring (I love these AmeriColor Gel Paste Food Colors. They are what we used in a cake decorating class I took. So much better than the liquid ones you get at the grocery and the squeeze bottle makes it much easier than the ones in the plastic cup.)
Cupcake liners

Start by preparing the cake mix from the package directions. Then spit the batter into two bowls. If you happen to have two of the same bowl use those. It makes it easier to tell if the batter is split evenly.

Then add blue coloring to one bowl, red to the other and mix well.

Here’s a super trick I learned a few years ago and have used ever since. When filling a baggie place it in a cup, fill and zip close. Then remove from the cup.

Hold the baggie with the corner you plan to cut up, so the icing drains away from that corner and doesn’t flood out when you cut the corner. Cut the corner off as shown, not too big.

Fill each muffin cup about 1/3 full of red cake batter. To make the batter stop draining from the hole, between filling each cup, tip it back so the icing drains away from the cut corner. Once you’re done filling one pan you can set the baggie with the cut corner on the box to wait for the next pan, unless you’re lucky enough to have two.