JELL-O Tie-dye Fruity Cupcakes
"Who wants to make tie-dye cupcakes?"--The words aren't even out of my mouth before my five and seven year old daughters are making a mad dash for the kitchen and helping me rustle up the ingredients. Nothing gets those girls moving like dessert. Would JELL-O tie-dye fruity cupcakes measure up to their high taste standards?
The preparations
The ingredients to make these cupcakes were inexpensive and easily obtainable from the grocery store (I sent my husband and he came back with everything we needed!). You'll need any white cake mix and the ingredients to bake the cake as directed. My cake, for instance, required three eggs, a cup of water, and a quarter of a cup of vegetable oil. Purchase three JELL-O Flavor Gelatin packages-lime, lemon, and strawberry. Finally, you'll need paper cupcake holders, a whipped vanilla frosting, and one small plastic bag to use for piping.
The cupcakes
After making the cake mix as directed on the box, I evenly distributed the batter into three bowls. Lucky for me I had two little helpers, which meant one bowl per person. Each bowl of batter was mixed with half of a 3 oz. package of JELL-O in the appropriate color and flavor, so that each person had a different colored batter. Everyone used a tablespoon to place one small scoop of their batter into a lined muffin tray. You should be able to make 18-24 cupcakes depending on your cake mix. Unfortunately, we overfilled our first batch of 12 cupcakes, so remember to stick close to the 2/3 fill mark.
Bake the cupcakes as directed or until a wooden toothpick comes out of the center clean.
The frosting
Once the cupcakes have all cooled, you can begin frosting them. For this task, I preferred a store-bought whipped vanilla frosting. I filled a small plastic bag with the frosting, sealed it, and then snipped a very small corner off of the bottom. I used that to carefully pipe the frosting onto each cupcake, starting with a large swirl on the outside and working my way in and up.
We sprinkled the top of each frosted cupcake with some of the leftover strawberry gelatin mix (the lemon and lime colors won't be visible on the white icing).
Fun tips
As written, these came out perfectly. My daughters loved the fruity taste mixed with the vanilla frosting, and they'd make a great treat on a sunny spring or summer afternoon.
Because we overfilled our first 12 cupcakes, we decided to use a mini-muffin tin for the remaining batter. We sprayed the tray with non-stick cooking spray and then used a tiny bit of each color batter in each cup (some only got 1-2 colors if the chef was generous). We baked them for approximately 14 minutes (about five minutes less than the box mix instructed for larger muffins). My daughters loved these, and ate them as muffins without any frosting!
Winning the approval of both of my mini-chefs, as well as dad and mom, earns these tie-dye fruity cupcakes plenty of praise in our household. We will certainly be making these again!
Content by Kelly Herdrich.
