This post is part of the Cupcake Academy series, which covers everything you could possibly need to know about baking and decorating cupcakes. Although you would probably mainly want to create brightly coloured cupcakes, such as rainbow or red/blue/green velvet, you can also use the exact same techniques to create bright cakes and cookies too!
What to make? –
Red velvet cupcakes! Or green velvet, purple velvet, yellow velvet…
Ombre cake –
I have made both a pink and a purple ombre cake in the last year, using the same recipe as my rainbow cake – but neither cakes have made it onto the blog due to my not being around when they were cut. The principles are exactly the same as the Rainbow Cake though.
It’s also possible to make colourful cookies such as those shown here.
How to achieve vibrant colours in your baking
The most important thing is to use gel food colouring rather than liquid food colouring that you’ll more commonly find in the supermarket. Gel colouring has two advantages – first, it is highly pigmented – meaning you can achieve bright (and I mean neon bright, if thats what you want!) colours, and second, a little goes a long way, meaning that you don’t water down or alter the flavour of your delicious cake.
More supermarkets are starting to sell gel colouring – Silver Spoon have a limited range and Asda have also started selling it in their home2bake own brand range.
However, for me, the best place to get it from is online – I buy mine from eBay and stick to three brands –
- Sugarflair – the one most commonly found in UK baking shops. Their bright Christmas Red is perfect for red velvet cakes. I also use the bigger, more intense Red Extra when I’m making A LOT of red velvets! You can get a tub from about £2.50 delivered on eBay – and how long the tubs last is down to the colour and how often you use it – I need a lot more red than any other colour so I’d recommend buying more of those. However, they do keep for years and I have some colours that I haven’t even opened yet. Overall, I think its DEFINITELY worth it. If you’re interested in making a rainbow cake, you might be interested to know that you can buy all of the gel colours you’ll need in one set.
- Americolor – Generally, Sugarflair colours should cover everything you need, however, Americolor has them beat when it comes to BRIGHT NEON colours. Their electric pink and electric purple gels give you NEON bright frosting or cakes that just make me happy! They are a bit pricier – about £4 per bottle, but again, they will last for multiple cakes, and give an amazing colour.
- Wilton – I’ve experimented a bit less with Wilton colours, but they are about £3 a tub and have some great softer and classic colours, like rose, a beautiful pink.
To add your gel to your cake batter, you’ll need to divide the mix up into bowls – ie four if you’re doing a four layer ombre cake, and then add gel colouring using a toothpick or the end of a knife. Add colour slowly, and do not double dip the toothpick/knife as getting batter into the tub of colouring will shorten its shelf life and contaminate it. Keep adding colouring and mixing until you have a colour you’re happy with!
Above are the rainbow cupcakes that I made – you can see that its pretty impossible to achieve a vibrant purple with the Sugarflair purple gel, which is why I switched to the Americolor version.
Finally, once you’re ready to bake your very vibrant cakes, follow these tips to make sure that they stay as colourful as possible –
- don’t overfill – as you can see in the picture above, the cases are about half full of rainbow cake batter – what you want is for the cake to rise, but stay pretty flat. When a cake case is overfilled, it will tend to rise up more dramatically and brown around the edges – we don’t want that!
- don’t overbake – kind of obvious but this isn’t as simple as only baking for the alloted time! All ovens have hot spots and cool spots, the trick is to rotate your cakes / cupcakes so that none of their their colourful tops get browned. Ideally, you want them to completely retain their pre-cooking colour – as with the rainbow cake above.
Good luck with your colourful baking! Are you inspired to create some red velvet cupcakes for Valentine’s Day or green velvet for St Patricks?
x Kerry
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Hi there
I need help with my cake. Im trying to get a nice green layer for my rainbow cake. I have tried the green layer 3 times but it is just not turning green.
Please help. The first time I thought maybe i did not add enough colour but the 2 times after I~ added a lot of colouring and it was a beautiful green but once I baked it, it came out cream.
What should I do?
What kind of gel colouring are you using – which brand? I’ve never had that happen!
Im using DR Oetker food colouring gel. It has happened 3 times now and I don’t know what to do.
Well, don’t use Dr Oetker. I recommend using Wilton, Sugarflair or Americolour gel colourings
Hi Kerry
I am using SugarFlair grape violet to make a special cake and though the top stays the right colour the bottom and sides have turned green! Is it because I have lined my tins with baking parchment – the surfaces need to be really smooth and perfect as using fondant icing on them.
Hey Lisa! I’ve never had any sugarflair colours change colour, that is very strange indeed. I don’t think that baking parchment could have any effect on the cake’s colour. I’d suggest getting in touch with Sugarflair to see what they think. If you want to bake a replacement cake, I’d get Americolor’s Electric Purple as that’s always been very reliable (and purple!) for me. Faircake.co.uk sell it for under £3
Thanks Kerry for your suggestions, I will contact Sugarflair first as this colour matches perfectly to the dress – talk about making hard work for myself :-)will let you know how i get on.
Hi Keryy
I am baking a 2-tier cake for my daughter’s party, I have a 23cm cake tin and a 17cm cake tin. Will your recipe of the rainbow cake be enough batter to make these two tiers, do you think? An then the recipe says semi skimmed milk – does it have to be, or can you use full cream or fat free? What is best?
Anyone please help! Thank you in advance 🙂
Hi Tammy! The milk question is easy – it’s simply to thin the batter down a little, so any liquid will do, from milk to water to cream.
On the tin question, I’m not sure I’m afraid as I’ve never tried baking them in anything other than a 6 or 8 inch tin. However, it’s really easy and quick to make up another bowl of batter if you find you don’t have enough.
hi i was wondering how you get your red colour so red,i use the wilton red and no matter how much i put in the cake mix its always a pale red
Gell colours really are the way forward aren’t they?! I need to buy myself a whole set I think 🙂
Definitely! That rainbow set is good value, or I’d recommend the asda ones too if you shop there 🙂 And I would buy multiples of the colours you use a lot!
Great tips there! Especially the oven ones, it’s pretty tricky x x
How I LOVE cupcakes which is why I have Magnolia Bakery on speed dial. The pictures are amazing. I can’t get over how scrumptious everything looks. The red velvets look like they’re wearing black tie. The sweet tooth in me salutes the sweet tooth in you.