Sunday, March 1, 2009

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

26 comments:

vanillasugarblog said...

Oh sweetie those are fabulous, I can only imagine how hard it was to create them. It breaks my heart that they aren't with you to celebrate their absolute fabulousity!
You're a good Mom :-)

Donna-FFW said...

You are beautiful. You bring tears to my eyes. These are gorgeous and such a testament to what a good Mom you so are! HUGS to you.

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful way to remember.

Lissaloo said...

Those are just beautiful, great post :)

Selba said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Maria said...

Those are the coolest cupcakes ever!! What a great way to celebrate a birthday!!

Ingrid_3Bs said...

Monica, I'm not certain what the correct response is as I know unless I've lost a children I really can't know the depth of your loss and sadness.

I'm sending up a prayer that your next pregnancy goes well!

Awesome cupcakes.
~ingrid

Sara said...

I'm so sorry for your loss, the cupcakes are beautiful.

Michel-lee said...

I've never seen a cupcake with so many colors. It's so beautiful.

Kristi said...

Beautiful cupcakes for a beautiful family!

I'll have to try these soon!

Anonymous said...

when im done putting in the last color mix into the paper cup, should the mix end up to about half of the cup?

Monica H said...

Anonymous-

Once all the layers were in the cups, they were about 2/3 full. I thought they would overflow, but they didn't. Just be sure not to make each layer too thick or you won't have room for all the colors.

Good luck.

Collins Family said...

These are adorable. I made these and of course yours were much prettier but my colors came out great and they were very YUMMY. Great recipe. Thanks

Monica H said...

Collins Family- I'm glad you made them...it's what they taste like that really counts :-)

mikkomeek said...

I'm new to your blog and clicked on this recipe. It looks very yummy. I am a mommy to 2 boys (2 1/2 & 10mo.), my heart broke and I got that sinking feeling reading your post. My heart goes out to you, I couldn't imagine life w/out my mama's boys. I too struggled w/ infertility, 1 miscarriage and 3 years later our first son arrived...our 2nd took us by surprise. God is awesome and He will answer your prayers. Everything happens for His greater glory and it will make you cherish your life and children even more than if it was handed to you on a silver platter. I will be putting in a prayer request for you that you will soon bare and deliver a healthy child as I know your home will bring lots of happiness to any child. You're a great mommy and all you have gone through will only make you appreciate and cherish your children more:) xo.

Two fit and fun gals said...

these are gorgeous im gonna bookmark this page thank you :)

Katie said...

Mine turned out delicious, but the colors ended up almost completely upside down from how i had them to start with. From the top down: blue, green, yellow, orange, red, purple. I seriously have no idea what happened. Really cute, though! Thanks so much for the recipe!!!

Anonymous said...

I have just found your blog and everything you make is gorgeous but these are truly fabulous! I know I must make these for my sons, will have a go at dairy egg free ones because my youngest has allergies. LOVE love love them!

Anonymous said...

I realise I didn't read your post properly first time. I am so sorry for you loss x A beautiful tribute.

hplott73 said...

LOVE these. Would this also work for a cake if I doubled the recipe?

Anonymous said...

gorgeous cupcakes! taste even better :)

just to let you know, i think someone has taken your recipe as their own though... http://bakingbites.com/2009/05/rainbow-cupcakes/#more-3174

DeenaTeena said...

What three primary colors of the food coloring do you buy? Can you usually find that brand of food coloring in a bakers store?

Monica H said...

Deena- There is a picture above of the brand and colors that I purchased. I found them at my local bake store but Michaels and Hobby Lobby do not carry them. The three primary colors are Red, Blue and Yellow. From there you can mix and match and make any color you need.

If you can't find the gel colors locally, Amazon usually has fair prices. Hope you find some!

Monica

Anonymous said...

those are great. im sure he would have loved them. youre a great mom.

Anonymous said...

I made these rainbow cupcakes in January for my daughter to share with her classmates to celebrate her 4th Birthday....they were a hit with the children and teachers!
I also made your M&M cookies....they were awesome!
Thank you for sharing your recipes!

trish said...

Hi, I wana try this tomorrow but into a round rainbow cake instead of cupcake. If im using 7 inchpan, how long shld I bake? And can the batter be left waiting while baking batch by batch?

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