Need a fun red, white and blue Fourth of July cupcake? These yummy cupcakes are the perfect patriotic sweet treat for memorial day, labor day or a summer pool party!
Ingredients
For The Cupcakes
½CupUnsalted Softened Butter
¾CupSugar
2Large Eggs
½CupVanilla Yogurt
2TeaspoonsVanilla Extract
1 ⅓CupsFlour
1 ¼TeaspoonsBaking Powder
½TeaspoonSalt
For The Buttercream Frosting
1CupUnsalted Softened Butter
4CupsPowdered Sugar
2-3TablespoonsMilk
1 1/2TspVanilla Extract
Red and Blue Gel Food Coloring
Instructions
For The Cupcakes
Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees and lining your cupcake pan with paper liners.
Cream together the softened butter and sugar until well combined.
Now add your eggs, yogurt and vanilla, and mix well into your batter.
In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients the flour, baking powder and salt and stir. Then add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
Spoon the batter into the muffin cups filling until they are about 2/3 full. Try to keep the batter even between the cupcakes, but don't overfill!
Bake at 350 degrees for 11- 12 minutes. Check with a toothpick to make sure they are done and batter isn't clinging to the toothpick. Let cupcakes cool completely!
For The Buttercream Frosting And Decorations
In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream softened butter until fluffy on medium. This takes about five minutes to make it soft and fluffy.
Add in the powdered sugar a cup at a time, each time fully mixing it into the butter. Scrape the butter mixture off the bowl with a spatula to help it combine.
Then add the milk and vanilla and blend it into your frosting well.
Remove 1/2 cup of icing for the white stars and set aside. Now divide the remaining frosting into two bowls. Add blue gel food coloring to one bowl and red gel food coloring to the other until your frosting is your desired color.
Add each color of frosting to a piping bag. Fill one piping bag with blue and one with red frosting. Attach to the multi-color coupler according to instructions on the package. Pipe the multi-color swirl. I used the 1-A tip. included. (if you don't have a coupler that can hold two bags of frosting, see the notes.)
Place the white icing into a piping bag and add a star to the top of each cupcake. I used a 4-B tip (not included in kit) but you can use any star-shaped tip. Enjoy your cupcakes!
Notes
If you don't have a coupler (the part that holds the tip onto the frosting bag) that can hold more than on frosting there are two things you can do.
You can load up two pipings bags with icing without tips. Snip the tips off the bags, and then insert both bags of frosting into a bigger piping bag already loaded with a tip. Then carefully twist the top of your bag, and pipe your frosting.
You can load the red and blue frosting both into one bag but it's trickier. Load one color onto one side of the bag, and the second color onto the other side of the same bag with a long spatula. Make sure to clean the spatula in between loading the bag to help keep the colors from mixing. Then carefully squeeze the bag to pipe the swirl.