question

[pegm81484]

I'm making cupcakes for a Fourth of July party and I'm going to be dying the batter to make it red white and blue with vanilla frosting. However, I feel like vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting can get a bit boring. Does anyone have any simple suggestions to doctor up either the cake and/or frosting without changing the color of them since I

Comments

[ericasanderz]

There are all kinds of ways of doctoring up the cake itself...you can add chocolate chips before baking or you can fill the cupcakes after they are baked and cooled...you can fill them with jam, nutella, whip cream etc.

[beach___bum]

Almond extract instead of vanilla!

[raynemaiden]

There are tons of flavorings you can add that impart little to no coloring. I personally like using coconut milk substituted for some or all of the liquid. I have a rather large collection of flavorings from lemon, orange, and coconut to rum and maple. A lot of people don't like using imitation flavoring but there are a lot of non-imitation extracts that you can buy these days. Almond and mint are popular choices. Depending on where you live I have found that stores such as WalMart have much cheaper flavorings then a grocery store.

[picklebabe]

^ yes, I was going to say orange is delicious and doesn't do anything for coloring the batter (in my experience). Also, martha stewart has a honey cinnamon frosting (just google it and the recipe should pop up) that's just amazing and it's a light color so you can dye the frosting, too, if you want.
You can also add juice instead of extract to a recipe. I made some orange sour cream cupcakes a while back. I replaced one of the liquids (water, I think..) with fresh squeezed OJ and the cupcakes were AWESOME. 1 orange yields enough for most recipes. but having 2 oranges on hand can never hurt. Also, if you roll the orange against the counter before squeezing you'll release more juice (a good trick with all citrus fruits).