Earth Cupcakes for Earth Day

I saw the idea for these cute cupcakes on Pinterest, and I wanted to do something similar. Yes, I did make these on Earth Day. I wanted to do something special and cupcakes seemed special enough. I thought they looked cooler when they didn't have frosting, but you can't tell the family that cupcakes are done when they aren't frosted. It just isn't right. I took a pic before and after the frosting to show the difference. Sadly the cupcakes didn't look as cool when you bit into them. Oh well. Cupcakes are always awesome. I was amused by how cool the batter looked when I swirled the food coloring into it, so I took a picture of each for you. I noticed after the fact that the pictures look pretty cool with the food coloring and measuring cups in the background. Accidental picture awesomeness for the win!

I kind of cheated with these cupcakes because I didn't want to make my own vanilla cake. So, I pulled a Pintester moment and used a boxed cake mix. I learned an important lesson when I made these... you need about 1/3 of green and 2/3 of blue batter. I had too much green and a few of my earth cupcakes turned out like martian planets. I will keep that in mind the next time I make these and you might want to learn from my mistake. Another thing I did differently is that I didn't use a heart cookie cutter to take out a portion of the cupcake to fill in a heart of frosting. I attempted to frost a heart and failed, so they had white frosting and some were decorated with leftover gel decorating stuff and others just got some sprinkles slapped on them. I only managed to get 23 cupcakes out my boxed mix, but it is supposed to give you 24. I might have put too much batter in some, but they turned out just fine. I hope you get adventurous and try this!

Earth Cupcakes (inspired by a Pinterest photo)

Ingredients:

• blue and green food coloring or coloring gel
• vanilla cake mix (make your favorite kind from scratch or use a boxed mix)
• frosting (canned, homemade, whatever)
• decorations (sprinkles, fondant, different color frosting, gel decorators, etc.)
• muffin paper cups/foil cups/ silicone

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to the temperature specified for your cake recipe.
2. Follow the recipe or instructions for your vanilla cake mix to make the batter.
3. Dye 2/3 of your batter blue and 1/3 of your batter green.
4. Line your muffin tin with muffin cups.
5. Add a few teaspoons of blue batter to each muffin cup.
6. Alternate spoonfuls of blue and green until the muffin cups are 1/2 - 2/3 full.
7. Bake for the appropriate time. (My box mix took about 20 minutes or so)
8. Let the cupcakes cool.
9. Frost and decorate as you wish.
10. Enjoy! 

I hope you try this recipe out. It was a fun recipe for Earth day and could also be used for other occassions (planet party, anyone?). The colors could be switched up as well leading to rainbow cupcakes, colors of an alma mater, flag colored cupcakes, etc. : )

Love it? Hate it? Want to make it? Let me know what you think with a comment below!

As always...

Bon appétit!

P.S.  If you love it, or have made it, or have any suggestions then feel free to leave me a comment! I love hearing input from my readers and would LOVE to hear from YOU! :)