Rainbow Cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan, gas mark 4). Line a muffin tin with 12 muffins cases.

Cream together the butter and sugar until pale, add the vanilla extract and eggs, one at a time, beating until mixed. Gently fold in the flour.

Split the mixture into 4 equal parts, and colour with yellow, green, blue and pink gel. Once mixed well, spoon the mixtures in a random order until the cases are about half full. Using a skewer, swirl the mixture around gently in the cases to marble the rainbow mixture.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown or a skewer comes out clean. Allow cakes to cool on a wire rack.

For the rainbow frosting use an electric whisk to mix together the butter and icing sugar then add the milk and vanilla extract and whisk until light and fluffy.

Using a palette knife, smooth some blue frosting onto the top of the cupcakes to form the base of the rainbow cupcake design.

Once you've done this, line the remaining colours of buttercream onto a sheet of clingfilm and roll together to form a tube.

As we did with the cake mixture, split the buttercream up into 4 equal parts and add in your food gel colouring. We used green, purple, pink and blue. Once you've got your colours mixed, this is where the fun starts!

Pop the clingfilm tube into a piping bag, with the ends snipped and squeeze through a patterned nozzle to form the rainbow arch on the cupcakes. 

Finally, pop some white edible decoration balls on the ends of the rainbows to make fluffy clouds.