Rainbows For Jack

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have 2 sons that were stillborn. Jack's would be/should be birthday was last Saturday, February 21st.

I made these beautifully fantastic cupcakes for him. Rainbow cupcakes for my rainbow baby (a baby born after a loss). Click to see Jack's 1st, and Sam's 2nd Birthday cupcakes.

Double Vanilla Cupcakes from Amy Sedaris

• 1 ½ sticks (12 tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 ¾ cups of sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 Teaspoons of pure vanilla
• 1/2 Vanilla Bean, scraped (optional)
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• 2 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
• 2 ½ cups of flour
• 1 ¼ cups of milk

In a medium bowl, mix together salt, baking powder and flour. Stir to combine then set aside.

Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl, then add in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla extract and the seeds of half a vanilla bean. Beat until well combined.

Alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the butter/sugar mixture. Start with flour, end with flour.

*For Rainbow Cupcakes: Divide the batter into 6 bowls. Color your batter with food coloring (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet). I used Americolor colors because they are more concentrated than the typical grocery store variety and the colors are intense without using a lot of it. For each bowl of color I only used about a nickel size amount of dye. If I had used liquid food dye, I would have had to use the entire bottle to get the colors that rich looking and it would have thinned the batter out too much. Each bottle was $1.80, but you only need the 3 primary colors to make the rainbow.

Spoon or pipe your batter in thin layers into the muffin cups, being careful not to mix the colors. I put my batter into Ziploc bags then I snipped the end of bag. When I was done, I just threw away the bag. No cleaning of pastry bags!

Bake at 375 degrees for 18-20 minutes for regular cupcakes and about 15 minutes for mini cupcakes.

Recipe makes 20 regular cupcakes. I made 18 regular and 4 mini cupcakes.

Vanilla Bean Frosting from Cupcake Bakeshop

• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out
• 4-5 cups powdered sugar ( I used 4 cups)

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy. Add the cream cheese and beat until combined. Then add the vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, and 3 cups of powdered sugar and beat at low speed, occasionally stopping to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl, until light and fluffy. Add more powdered sugar to arrive at the consistency and sweetness you like.

I put my frosting into a large freezer bag, snipped the end and piped the frosting onto the rainbow mounds.

Makes enough to frost about 30 cupcakes.

Happy Birthday Sweet Boy!

Jackson Robert- February 21, 2007