Everything is better when you have cupcakes, and cupcakes are better when they are bright and colorful Rainbow Cupcakes!
Rainbow cupcakes are perfect for St. Patrick’s Day, birthday parties, or any time you want to make a dessert that will make someone smile. These are vanilla funfetti-style cupcakes topped with fluffy blue buttercream and candy rainbows. What’s not to love?
While you could tint the cupcake batter in rainbow colors so that the inside matches the outside, I like the simplicity of making plain vanilla cupcakes with added rainbow sprinkles instead. You don’t need all day to make these fancy (but easy!) rainbow cupcakes. In fact, they will be ready to eat in less than an hour.
Looking for something different? Try my orange cupcakes or watermelon cupcakes!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Scratch Vanilla Cupcake Recipe – I’m giving you my absolute favorite go-to cupcake recipe. These little cakes are packed with vanilla flavor, soft, tender, and perfect for decorating.
- Beautiful (and Easy!) decorations – Rainbow candy strips make it so simple to create a dreamy decoration on top of each cupcake, complete with fluffy clouds and a blue sky.
- Party Cupcakes – I love rainbow cupcakes for kids’ birthday parties, or any time that a little extra color is needed to brighten things up. These also work really well for St. Patrick’s Day!
Ingredients in Rainbow Cupcakes
Here’s what you need to make these fun rainbow cupcakes!
Complete list of ingredients and amounts can be found in the recipe card below.
- Unsalted Butter: Let the butter soften at room temperature before you start baking.
- Granulated Sugar: To make these cupcakes perfectly sweet.
- Eggs: Two large eggs, also at room temperature go into this recipe.
- Vanilla Extract: Buy pure vanilla extract, never the imitation stuff. This is the only flavoring of the cupcake, so you want it to be good.
- Yogurt: Adding yogurt to cake and cupcake recipes makes them dense and moist, like a bakery-style cupcake.
- Flour, baking soda, and salt: these are the dry ingredients, common to most cupcake recipes, and probably already in your pantry.
- Sprinkles: These cupcakes are extra fun because we’ll add sprinkles to the batter to create a funfetti cupcake effect! Choose jimmies-style sprinkles rather than nonpareils so that the colors don’t bleed into the white cakes.
- Buttercream Frosting: I’ll show you how to make an easy American buttercream with softened butter, powdered sugar, cream, vanilla extract, and blue food coloring.
Rainbow Candy Strips: Sour rainbow candy strips from Airheads are what you see on my rainbow cupcakes. There are other similar brands, so choose whichever you find at the store. Cut the strips in half. You’ll need one piece for each cupcake.
Tip!
Simple rainbow jimmies are the perfect sprinkles for adding to the cupcake batter and decorating the tops!
How to Make Rainbow Cupcakes
Vanilla Rainbow Cupcakes with fluffy buttercream frosting and candy rainbows are so easy to make from scratch!
- Get Ready to Bake: Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C and line a muffin pan with 12 cupcake liners. Set aside while you make the batter.
- Mix the Wet Ingredients: In a large bowl, using an electric hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar at medium speed until lighter in color and smooth. Then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing after each until it’s well-incorporated. Add the vanilla extract and yogurt, and continue to mix until incorporated. Set the bowl of wet ingredients aside.
- Mix the Dry Ingredients: In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
- Combine Wet and Dry: Pour about one-third of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until combined using the electric mixer. Then add the rest of the dry ingredients and the sprinkles. Mix just until everything is combined.
- Bake: Fill the cupcake liners halfway to ⅔ full with batter. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Allow to rest and cool completely before decorating.
- Make Frosting: Make a simple buttercream cupcake frosting by creaming butter in a large bowl. Slowly add the powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Add the salt, vanilla, and heavy cream, and continue blending to get a smooth frosting. Add additional cream if needed to get the right consistency for piping.
- Color the Frosting: Take about ¼ cup of buttercream and set aside. Add blue food coloring to the rest of the buttercream and mix well.
- Decorate! Place the blue buttercream frosting into a piping bag and use a closed star tip to pipe a spiral, starting in the center of each cupcake. Then pipe white buttercream clouds on each side of the cupcake. Place half of an Airheads strip in the clouds to make rainbows. Add additional sprinkles if desired.
Recipe Tips
Don’t overfill. Filling the cupcake liners only halfway, and definitely no more than ⅔ of the way is key to making sure that cupcakes don’t overflow. They aren’t as cute if they look like mushrooms!
Measure Correctly: I have some tricks for making sure you’re measuring your ingredients correctly! When baking, it’s important to accurately measure everything to get the best results in the end.
Try Different Flavors: You can decorate any flavor of cupcake to create these Rainbow Cupcakes. Try my chocolate cupcake recipe or any other cupcake recipe that you love.
Cool Cupcakes Completely: Don’t try to add buttercream to cupcakes that are still warm. It will just melt and fall right off!
No Decorating Tips? I’m showing you exactly how to make these cupcakes using piping bags and tips, but if you’d rather, you can still make beautiful rainbow cupcakes by spreading the blue frosting with a knife or spatula and adding the clouds using a ziplock bag with the corner cut off.
Storing Tips
Once decorated, you can store your rainbow cupcakes in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
I prefer to add the rainbow candy shortly before serving though. This way it’s fresh and soft. It could dry out otherwise.
Unfrosted cupcakes can be frozen, wrapped individually, for up to 3 months.
What To Serve With
These fun cupcakes will be a welcome dessert for any occasion, but rainbows remind me of leprechauns, and that reminds me of the delicious meal that we enjoy on St. Patrick’s Day!
Corned Beef and Cabbage: My recipe for Instant Pot Corned Beef is the easiest way to make a flavorful Irish brisket roast with all of the fixings, including cabbage, carrots, and potatoes!
Or, try this recipe for Irish Lamb Stew. It’s ready in an hour and is a total comfort food. Serve it over Colcannon (Irish mashed potatoes with greens).
Looking for green treats for St. Patrick’s Day? Make Green Tea Waffles for breakfast, or a sweet Shamrock Shake for dessert!
More Cute Cupcakes To Try
All Cupcakes ➜
FAQs
Yes, sour cream will work well if you’d rather use that instead of yogurt in this recipe.
I like to use Wilton gel food coloring for frostings and any other baked goods. The gel food coloring is thicker than liquid coloring and gives bright, vivid colors.
Do you need to make a LOT of rainbow cupcakes? Feel free to double or triple this recipe to make as many as you need. These sell super quick at bake sales!
Whether you’re making Rainbow cupcakes for a birthday party, St. Patrick’s Day, or another festive occasion, everyone is going to love them! Be sure to pin the recipe so others can try it too!
Did you make this? Be sure to leave a review below and tag me on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest!
Rainbow Cupcakes
Recipe Video
Equipment
- 12 cup muffin pan
- 12 Cupcake liners
- Piping Bag
- Star Tip
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter softened to room temperature
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- ½ cup yogurt natural or greek
- 1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup sprinkles
Vanilla Buttercream:
- ½ cup unsalted butter softened
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream or whole milk, or half and half
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- Blue food coloring
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
Decorations:
- 12 3-inch rainbow candy sour strips I used Airheads brand
- 2 tablespoons sprinkles
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C and line a muffin pan with 12 cupcake liners. Set aside while you make the batter.
- In a large bowl, using an electric hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar at medium speed until lighter in color and smooth. Then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing after each until it’s well-incorporated. Add the vanilla extract and yogurt, and continue to mix until incorporated. Set the bowl of wet ingredients aside.
- In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
- Pour about one-third of the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until combined using the electric mixer. Then add the rest of the dry ingredients and the sprinkles. Mix just until everything is combined.
- Fill the cupcake liners halfway to ⅔ full with batter. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until a cupcake inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Allow to rest and cool completely before decorating.
- Make a simple buttercream cupcake frosting by creaming butter in a large bowl. Slowly add the powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Add the salt, vanilla, and heavy cream, and continue blending to get a smooth frosting. Add additional cream if needed to get the right consistency for piping.
- Take about ¼ cup of buttercream and set aside. Add blue food coloring to the rest of the buttercream and mix well.
- Decorate the cupcakes with buttercream frosting using the instructions below.
Buttercream Blue Sky with Wilton Tip #2D (Closed Star Tip)
- Start in the center of the cupcake and pipe a continuous spiral until you’ve covered the whole cupcake.
Buttercream Clouds with Wilton Tip #12
- Pipe white frosting around/at the bottom of the rainbow to create clouds.
Notes:
- Don’t overfill. Filling the cupcake liners only halfway, and definitely no more than ⅔ of the way is key to making sure that cupcakes don’t overflow. They aren’t as cute if they look like mushrooms!
- Measure Correctly: I have some tricks for making sure you’re measuring your ingredients correctly! When baking, it’s important to accurately measure everything to get the best results in the end.
- Try Different Flavors: You can decorate any flavor of cupcake to create these Rainbow Cupcakes. Try my chocolate cupcake recipe or any other cupcake recipe that you love.
- Cool Cupcakes Completely: Don’t try to add buttercream to cupcakes that are still warm. It will just melt and fall right off!
- No Decorating Tips? I’m showing you exactly how to make these cupcakes using piping bags and tips, but if you’d rather, you can still make beautiful rainbow cupcakes by spreading the blue frosting with a knife or spatula and adding the clouds using a ziplock bag with the corner cut off.
Nutrition Information
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.
© Little Sunny Kitchen
Sally says
It is the best fancy and yummy cupcakes ever! We love this! Thank you for sharing recipe!
Little Sunny Kitchen says
Hi Sally! Thank you so much for stopping back to let me know how much you enjoyed the cupcakes!
Ket says
Great Recipe!