Rainbow Cupcakes

Again my love for food coloring combats the stresses of real life. So while being threatened by Hurricane Irene, I tried out a recipe I've been thinking about for a while:
Rainbow Cupcakes

Unfortunately I did not have enough confectioner's sugar to follow this recipe's suggestion for buttercream frosting, so I found a different one to follow:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/VanillaCupcakes.html

So, I started with these fine ingredients:



I combined my dry ingredients and sent you a secret message:


I love my camera - the sharpness of the whisk-head on the mixer here as I combined the wet ingredients is awesome!


After I mixed the two together until "just combined," I poured roughly equal amounts into six bowls.


I then added 6 drops of color to each bowl:


Starting with the purple I poured tiny amounts into each pan (it barely made a full circle on the bottom with the first color) and STILL I only got 7 full cupcakes and one tiny one despite the recipe claiming it makes 10.


After 17 minutes of baking they looked adorable and popped right out of the pans after a quick run around the outsides with a butter knife.


I cooled them on a wire rack completely while whipping up the icing.


I started by sifting what powdered sugar I did have into a medium bowl:


Then I creamed the butter:


When I added the two together it made a rather small ball of goo:


I added the milk, which didn't look like it was going to do much:


But actually, after 3-4 minutes, it looked rather fluffy!


I loaded the icing into a ziplock bag and snipped off a corner:


Then I put an adorable little curlique of icing atop each cupcake for delicious rainbow cuteness!