Colorful Cupcakes - How Plain Colors Can Do Wonders to your Cupcakes

Looking for ideas to make colorful cupcakes that are vibrant and cheerful?

Well, nothing is more bright and vibrant than a palette of cheerful colors. Decorating cupcakes with a selection of contrast plain colors can be very attractive, even when there are no other elements of deco present. What is important is the choice of colors.

Here is one such colorful cupcake project I have worked on.

Colorful Cupcakes

I made these these colorful cupcakes for a loyal customer of mine.

She was having an office party and she wanted me to make cupcakes that are colorful and attractive to look at. She was working on a rather tight budget and so I suggested these plain colored cupcakes for her. I say plain colored cupcakes in a variety of colors because the cupcakes were meant to be plain-colored but in contrasting tones. Plain colored cupcakes without the phrase 'in a variety of colors' could well mean plain colored cupcakes in different shades of the same color.

Confused?

Well never mind. Let’s move on to the cupcakes I made below:

Colorful cupcakes in pastel shades of pink, blue, yellow, green and white.

So, my customer agreed to my suggestion and I set on making 50 of these colorful cupcakes.

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Here is how I made these colorful cupcakes:

The cupcakes were made using my sprinkles cupcakes recipe. Click here for the full recipe. This is basically vanilla cupcake batter filled with colorful sprinkles. I thought the sprinkles cupcakes would be a perfect complement for the plain colored frosting on the cupcakes. (My customer later sent me a thank you message for the cupcakes. She told me of the good reviews the cupcakes got for the surprise sparks of color in the cupcakes themselves.)

I used shiny silver cupcake casings for the cupcakes and the silver was a great choice as it took on a more neutral shade and worked well with all the various frosting shades.  

The frosting itself was royal icing. I divided the icing into 5. I tinted 4 of those using Wilton colors in royal blue, yellow, moss green, and pink. And left the last part in its original white color.  

Let me explain why I used royal icing instead of fondant. My customer did not want buttercream. Fondant was her choice, to be frank. But I suggested royal icing. The reason is that since the cupcakes were plainly frosted, a little bit of texture on the icing can add more character to the cupcakes. Plus, this was for a casual event, and flat fondant icing would seem a little incomplete without any additional decorations.

So I resorted to leaving the frosting on the cupcakes not so smooth, on purpose, simply for the texture.

My customer liked the cupcakes and I was glad to have made her happy.

I hope this has given you some inspiration on using pastel shades for your cupcakes.

Happy cupcaking!