OK, so full disclosure, I first made these patriotic cupcakes for Memorial Day — but they work for any American holiday. And, you could totally change the colors — red, green and white for Christmas, or red, pink and white for Valentine’s Day. You get the idea …
First, the cupcakes. Because I was making these with my five-year-old, and didn’t have a lot of time, I modified a cake mix (like I did with the lemon cupcakes), but of course you could make a cake from scratch too. Just make sure your recipe is for a white cake, and not a yellow one.
I followed the instructions on the box for the cake mix, and added a packet of instant vanilla pudding. The pudding gives the cake so much more flavor, and makes it much more moist. It makes the difference between the cupcakes tasting like they came from a box and tasting homemade.
Once the cake is mixed, divide the batter into three equal amounts into three separate bowls. You could measure it, but I just eye-balled it. Keep one bowl with the batter white, and add enough food coloring to make one bowl blue, and one bowl red. (Note: you will need a lot of red to make it really red, and not pink).
After your cupcake liners are in the pan, start with one of the colors (not white). I started with red. Fill a third of the liner with that color, then add white, and then blue. So easy!! Then just bake according to package directions.
For the icing, I really, really, really wanted to pipe red, white and blue flowers. But I didn’t because that would have taken a lot of time (although it would have looked amazing), and because Reagan wanted to help me decorate them. So instead, I iced the cupcakes with white icing, and then tinted some of the icing red, and some of it blue. Then, I warmed the icing in the microwave for a few seconds, so it became like a glaze, put it in a squeeze bottle, and went back and forth over the cupcakes (with Reagan’s help, of course). It worked. Maybe not quite as much fun as the red, white and blue flowers, but it worked. You could also use white icing and top with blueberries and strawberries, or use red or blue icing, and top with flaked coconut or shaved white chocolate.
One more thing: I recently discovered that you can freeze individual cupcake liners filled with cake batter. Game changer! Just fill the liners like you normally would, and then put the filled liners on a sheet tray, and put the sheet tray in the freezer. Once they are completely frozen, put them in a freezer bag, and then you can bake individual cupcakes! We typically just do sweets on Sundays, so it’s a great way for us to be able to have cupcakes, without wasting half of the batch (or being tempted to eat them on another day).
Happy July 4th!
