Recipe: Mini Rainbow Cakes

A very simple, mini baked dessert in eye-catching rainbow colors.

Over the years, we have made many rainbow desserts – our six layer Rainbow Cake, Rainbow Pancakes, Rainbow Colored Oreos, a Rainbow Sheet Cake… I’m sure there are others that I have missed. Now we can add Mini Rainbow Cakes to the list.

At first glance, these look like they could be really fiddly, but I have since learned a trick to make them anything but. In fact, they were so easy to make, Madeline actually made half of them herself. By separating the colored batter into six Ziploc bags, we can squeeze color dots into the pan to make the mini rainbows.

Life changing.

We originally made these last month, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, but they could be made for a variety of other occasions as well … a rainbow-themed party for sure, but now that you know the trick to making the color separation easy, you don’t have to just stick with rainbow colors. Shades of blue or pinks to celebrate a baby shower. Pastel colors for a Spring fete. Red, white, and blue for the Fourth of July. The possibilities are endless.

As you can tell, I didn’t make actual doughnuts (no mini doughnut pan and no need for another item in my kitchen). Rather, I used a mini muffin tin for the baking … henceforth, mini cakes.

Because the rules for bringing in baked goods for the kids’ schools are ridiculously strict (oh how I miss the days when we could just send in baked goods), we shared these with Madeline’s Girl Scout troop at our meeting. Those little six year old mouths demolished these in nothing flat. Two each even.

But I mean, really, can you blame them?

Mini Rainbow Doughnuts
Recipe courtesy of Hoosier Homemade

Ingredients

1 box Yellow Cake Mix
2 Eggs
1/2 cup {1 stick} butter, softened
1 cup milk
Coloring – Violet, Royal Blue, Kelly Green, Lemon Yellow, Orange, and Red

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, slightly spray doughnut pans
2. In a large bowl, combine cake mix, eggs, butter and milk, mix well
3. Divide equally into 6 separate bowls
4. Add coloring to each batter and mix well to combine for even coloring
5. Spoon batter into resealable bags and pipe a small amount into doughnut pan, fill about 1/2 way
6. Bake minis for about 7 minutes and regular size doughnuts for about 10-12 minutes
7. Serve with glaze if desired

Makes 36 mini doughnuts.

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