Fun with Tie-Dye and Food Coloring

Last night I (finally) watched my wonderful Valentine's gift from Melissa at Painting Mariposas in the Sky. It was the movie Julie & Julia and I absolutely loved it. I feel like ever since 2013 began I've been consistently busy with everything and haven't really had a chance to sit down and share the recipes on my blog that I originally intended. There's still some changes I'd like to make around these parts, things I would like to add as well as many recipes I still have to share with you!

Unfortunately I'm a bit behind on things, I wish I could be like my friend Marilla at Cupcake Rehab who was already testing St. Patrick's Day recipes before Valentine's Day was even over, eventually I believe I'll get there! For Valentine's Day I helped my daughter RiRi create some cute tie-dye Valentine's day cupcakes. I bought this food dye with the intention of making similar cupcakes for D-Man's birthday party, but I ran out of time and in retrospect we didn't need cupcakes anyway! So it worked out, and I was left with two boxes of white cake mix and two packages of vanilla frosting. So when RiRi said she wanted to put some things together for her closes six friends, we decided to do the tie-dye theme for them, but in Valentine's Day colors rather than the primary colors I was going to do for D-Man.

RiRi is in seventh grade now, and this is her first year not passing out Valentine's to each of her classmates. She decided to put together a little gift bag for each of her friends with candy, chocolates, a card and a cupcake. Since I used box cake mix and packaged frosting, this isn't necessarily a recipe, rather a fun project to do with the kids!

What You'll Need:

• 1 mixing bowl
• 1 box white cake mix (plus ingredients listed)
• 2 smaller bowls
• food dye in your choice of colors, I like the color gels pictured below
• 1 package cake frosting, preferably a white like vanilla or cream cheese flavors
• ...and a bit of time, patience and creativity. Sprinkles help too!

Duff Primary Color Gels

We started with the white cake mix, and the red food dye. Once everything was mixed together, we added two additional bowls. We separated the cake mix between the three bowls, one we kept white, one we just added one drop of red food gel coloring, and the last bowl we added about 10-12 drops of red to get a nice rich color.

We placed the Valentine's Day themed cupcake liners in the muffin tin, and layered each color one by one with a spoon. We did the following three methods of layering to make them all a bit different.

• Pink on the bottom, then red, then white. 
• White on the bottom, then pink, then red. 
• Red on the bottom, then white, then pink.

Once the colors were stacked we just put a toothpick in and mixed it up just a little to get a slight swirl effect.

I'm honestly not sure which was my favorite mixture to look at, I think they were all really cute!

Once the cupcakes were all baked, we opened up the frosting container and just dropped a few dots of red food dye in. I have a frosting syringe, so I just scooped some frosting with the dotted food dye into it, and when it came out through the icing tip it was a pretty tie-dye almost candy cane like effect. We dusted the top with some red sprinkles and larger heart shaped ones and her cupcakes were ready to go!

A closer look at the insides shows the layers of colors.

I have a confession to make though. Remember I mentioned I had bought two boxes of the cake mix? 

We ended up having to use both. I left my RiRi in charge of following the box directions, and the first time she didn't pay attention to the recipe calling for egg whites. If you use the whole egg, the cake isn't white. We didn't want to chance it, so we started over with the second box and used the whites with that.

We didn't want to waste the first box, so I sprayed my heart shaped cake pan and dumped the cake mix in. I added a bunch of red dye drops and mixed it up just a bit and threw it in the oven to bake. 

Once the cake was cooled and we finished making all the cupcakes, I did the same effect with the frosting and spread it over the cake. Since it was smoothed onto the cake rather than piped on, it didn't have the same tie-dye effect, but it was pretty nonetheless! It was also more Valentine's goodies for our kiddo's!

The yellow cake mix didn't even look bad with the red food dye, just something to remember.

It was a fun, impromptu treat that we all enjoyed!

Our Valentine's goodies were a hit. Her friends loved them and we enjoyed the leftover ones. It was a fun project that we would definitely do again, maybe red and green for Christmas, or green and white for St. Patrick's day, or all sorts of colors to create a rainbow? The possibilities are endless, and with the food gel we only used a few drops so I still have a lot of color to play around with in the future!

While we're on the subject of Valentine's Day, check out the gorgeous roses Big G brought to me! Love!

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts are my own.