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Super Simple Rainbow Colored Angel Food Cupcakes
Food & Dessert

Super Simple Rainbow Colored Angel Food Cupcakes

Kyra

•6 minutes to read

Every year for the girls’ birthday parties we’ve been making some kind of cupcake so it’s simple to serve to a group and, an awesome side effect, they can easily blow out their candles without worrying about germs on an entire cake. This year Zoey once again decided to go with angel food cupcakes which led to this rainbow theme. These were super simple to create and I figured I’d share the final results with you.

Pinterest-geared image displaying a finished cupcake, the cupcakes before they were baked, my post's title, and my main URL.

If you’re curious about other cupcake options here are some that we’ve made before:

  • Several years ago we did this same idea with a single color making a range of orange to white cupcakes with cool marbling effects. That time the food dye was added to the entire bowl of angel food mix and partially stirred in to create the marbling.
  • Last year Zoey wanted strawberry cupcakes so I switched out our normal angel food with a box of white cake instead and then added strawberry Jello for the most incredibly moist and flavorful cupcakes.
  • Over the years, for Ada, we keep making brownie cupcakes with various mix-ins including pineapple tidbits.

What You Need

This is super simple. All you need to make this is a box of angel food cake, food dye, and, optionally, any toppings. We frequently make these the day before and top them with whip cream and sprinkles right as we serve them. To bake I used three cupcake tins with silicon liners and simplified mixing it up by using my stand mixer.

What I Did

Following the directions on the box I started by combining the angel food mix with one and a third cup of water in my stand mixer. Once it was ready I split the mix between three bowls and added food dye to each one so I had three unique colors matching the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue.

Image shows three bowls side by side. From left to right they're red, yellow, and white with blue dye in the center. Left of this is an empty and dirtied stand mix bowl with spatula and an empty Betty Crocker mix. To the right is a blue basket of food dye and flavor extracts.
I mixed up the box mix according to the directions, split it between three bowls, added food dye to each one, and stirred it in so I had three solid colored bowls of angel food cake batter.

With the mix ready I put silicon liners into two of my cupcake tins and started filling them up with the dyed angel food cake batter. To get the maximum number of unique cupcakes I decided to fill a third of the liners halfway up with each color. This meant, from the two dozen, I had eight with yellow bottoms, eight with blue bottoms, and eight with red bottoms. I then halved each of these sets of colors and filled them the rest of the way up with the alternate color. This meant my eight yellow bottomed cupcakes became four cupcakes with yellow topped with red and four cupcakes with yellow topped with blue. Once I filled all two dozen cupcake liners I took a chopstick and lightly mixed them together so each cupcake became marbled rainbow composed of its two primary colors along with its resulting secondary color. For example the red and yellow cupcake became a mix of red, yellow, and orange.

Image shows two dozen cupcakes halfway filled up. From left to right there are four yellows, eight blues, eight reds, and four more yellows. The bowls of colorful angel food cake batter are to the left with spoon handles sticking out.
After making the three colors I filled each cupcake liner halfway up with a single color making eight yellow, eight blue, and eight red bottomed cupcakes.
Image shows a closer look at the cupcakes from before. Now the left eight are red and then the center eight are yellow. The two rows on left are only half filled and consist of four reds and four yellows.
Once the bottom halves were done I topped them up with another color so I’d have four of each set of colors. At this point I had already topped the cupcakes with red and yellow and was about to top the last eight with blue.
Image shows three cupcake liners in a row each displaying a color (red, yellow, and blue). Two arrows come out of the yellow liner each pointing two a different liner below (side by side from each other). The one on the left has red at the top, yellow at the bottom, and orange below. On the right it says blue at the top, yellow at the bottom, and green below.
I drew a quick sketch on my reMarkable to show this. There were three colors put into the liners at first (see top row). Then each color section (here it shows yellow) were split in half and each half was topped with the other primary color. In this yellow case half of them were topped with red and the other half were topped with blue.
Image shows the same two cupcake tins but now the far right ones are blue. My hand is poised over a second one stirring the contents with a metal chopstick. The mixed ones show a bit of the orange, purple, or green through the marbling of the top and bottom colors.
With all the cupcake liners filled I next grabbed a chopstick and started mixing them up so we’d have a rainbow composed of the two primary colors and its secondary color.
Image shows the two cupcake tins with, from left to right, columns of orange, purple, green, orange, purple, and green. The same three bowls with red, yellow, and blue are off to the left.
Once I partially mixed them all there was a marbling and it was easy to see what the bottom and top colors were based on the result.
Image shows a row of six cupcake liners showing the individual color combinations created. The two primary colors are written inside and the resulting secondary color is written below.
To highlight all the combinations above I drew another sketch. Here it shows all the permutations along with the mixed secondary color written below. As you can see two different combinations make the same secondary color but as it’s primary colors are flipped the final cupcake still looks different as it wasn’t fully mixed in.

I had leftover angel food cake batter after filling the two dozen cupcake liners so I grabbed a third tin, filled it with more liners, and randomly emptied out all three bowls into them. I had one cupcake with hardly any mix at the end so I moved it over to another cupcake liner, gave them all a final mix with my chopstick, removed the empty liners, and declared the tins ready to be baked.

Image shows a larger muffin tin with most of the liners filled in. To the left sits the red bowl and an emptied yellow bow. In the foreground there's a fork and multicolored spatula.
I grabbed a third cupcake tin and started scraping the leftover angel food batter into them making sure they became a variety of colors. One liner only had a bit of batter in it so I made sure to move it into another liner after this photo.
Image shows the colorful angel food cake splattered cupcake tin with so many different colors showing.
I then removed the excess liners so the tin was ready to go.

While I was mixing the colorful angel food cake batter together I had set the oven to 350°F so it could preheat. This meant I could easily toss them right into the oven to bake for 28 minutes.

Image shows the first two tins side by side on the top shelf in the oven while that larger tin is sideways below.
Once the cupcakes were prepped and the oven preheated I carefully put them inside and baked them for 28 minutes at 350°F.
Image shows all three tins with browned and colorful cupcakes laid out on the stovetop.
Once the 28 minutes had past I carefully pulled one out, tested the largest cupcake with a cake testing stick, and then pulled the others out too.
Image shows two dozen colorful cupcakes lined up on a cooling rack while the rest sit propped up between the muffin divots on the other tin.
I then used a clean spatula to help pop each one out of the tin so I could let it cool quicker on a cooling rack.

Once they had cooled I carefully cut one of the cupcakes in half to check on the colors, take a photo for this post, and then divided it up so we could all have a small taste test.

A cupcake cut into four pieces spilling out of its liner on the stovetop. Behind it sits the other, cooling cupcakes.
The final cupcake turned out so colorful!

The remaining cupcakes were carefully put into a container in my fridge for the party the next day. At the party I used a whip cream dispenser to create my whip cream so I could then top each cupcake with the whipped cream before sprinkling sprinkles on top and handing them out. This process also meant I didn’t have to worry about the cupcakes getting too squished or jostled before the party and could store them in stacked in a container on its side if need be.

Zoey absolutely loved her cupcakes and I had to share them with you. Whether you choose to use a single dye color or create a rainbow effect like here I’d love to hear about it so feel free to share in the comments below. How did it go? How did they turn out? What was your party theme?

As a quick aside I could see this also being a fun sensory activity if you’re teaching color mixing to your child whether it’s a watched toddler activity or an accompanying art project for a teen.

Hope you’re having an awesome day!

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Browse Related Topic(s)

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