Fun and festive this Rainbow Frosting is a tasty and colorful addition to topping your cupcakes or swirling on the tops of other desserts! Perfect for any colorful event!
Ok I seriously have to tell you how much I absolutely love this Rainbow Frosting. It is just your regular buttercream but colored with different colors and then swirled.
It is so fun to make and really not hard at all. I know it kind of looks hard and there may be a few more steps to the process than your normal frosting recipe but it is well worth it.
We love making these around St. Patrick’s Day, it makes me thing of getting that pot of gold at the end, which pretty much I will call the cupcake, haha!
Kids love this frosting, they just find it super fun and can’t wait to devour it. But I’m right there with them, I’m a super colorful person and the more color the better.
You really can’t get any more extravagant (I’m sure you could but this is my fancy) then this Rainbow Frosting! It is super flavorful and it is just one of those ones you can use anytime or for a special occasion.
We make this all year long for birthdays, parties and more. For some reason people love color and I don’t blame them, it is a real attraction when you see a colorful dessert!
Some of my other favorite frostings we have on our site include: Marshmallow Frosting, Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting and White Chocolate Buttercream.
WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
- Minimal ingredients help this come together.
- You can decide how many colors and what colors you want to use.
- This is best on cupcakes but you can use it as an accent color on so many desserts.
INGREDIENTS NEEDED (FULL RECIPE AT BOTTOM):
Unsalted butter
Powdered sugar
Salt
Whole milk
Vanilla extract
Red gel food coloring
Blue gel food coloring
Yellow gel food coloring
Green gel food coloring
Purple gel food coloring
HOW TO MAKE RAINBOW FROSTING, STEP BY STEP:
- Place the butter in the body of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Whip the butter until smooth.
- Add the powdered sugar a little at a time until fully incorporated. Scrape down the sides.
- Add the salt, milk, and vanilla extract. Stir it in until combined, then whip on medium-high speed for 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Divide the buttercream between 5 small bowls. Add a different food color into each bowl and mix until the desired color is achieved, take note that the color will darken slightly as it sits.
- Take 5 pastry bags or gallon-sized bags and add the different color frosting to each of the bags.
- Place a piece of plastic wrap on your work surface. Snip off the ends of the bags and pipe about 1-inch sized stripes of frosting around 8 inches long. One color after the other touching until you have 5 stripes.
- Carefully roll the plastic wrap over itself so the frosting forms a log, overlapping the plastic wrap. Twist both ends to seal the frosting in place.
- Get a large pastry bag secured with a 1M open star tip. Snip off one edge of the log of frosting and gently place it into the pastry bag.
- Frost cupcakes in the pattern you desire. Serve immediately.
HOW MUCH FROSTING DOES THIS MAKE?
This makes enough frosting to generously frost about 12 cupcakes.
DOES THIS FROSTING HOLD UP WELL?
Yes! This is like the frosting you would find in the bakeries. It slightly crusts up on the outside while staying nice and soft on the inside, which is the perfect combination that we love.
DO I HAVE TO USE GEL FOOD COLORING?
We prefer to use gel food coloring over liquid food coloring as it is has more color concentration with less amount. You can absolutely use liquid food coloring, you will just need to use more to achieve brighter colors!
WHAT COLORS DID YOU USE?
These are the exact colors from the Wilton brand that we used for this Rainbow Frosting:
- Red- No Taste Red
- Blue – Royal Blue
- Green – Kelly Green
- Yellow- Lemon Yellow
- Purple- Violet
You can absolutely use any of your favorite color combos, this would be great for Easter with more pastel colors or for any holiday where you want to do a swirl type frosting.
HOW TO STORE:
The frosting can be stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container either separated after colored or as plain frosting before colored where it will keep for up to one month.
This can also be frozen, place in a freezer container and like above it will keep frozen for up to 3 months.
Remove to the refrigerator overnight to defrost, then let sit on the counter until it is pliable and able to pipe.
TIPS AND TRICKS:
- You can use any colors that you’d like, we listed the exact colors we used above.
- This is great on cupcakes or as a garnish to top other desserts.
- This can be frozen, see my tips above.
- The frosting will make enough to generously frost 12 cupcakes.
- You can absolutely double this recipe to have more on hand.
- You will need to make 2-3 of the frosting logs because it is too much frosting to make one large log, the end result will not be the same.
Love color and sweets? Then you will have such a fun time making this Rainbow Buttercream, super fun for everyone and taste great!
If you like this recipe you might also like:
If you’ve tried this RAINBOW FROSTING or any other recipe on my site, let me know in the comment section how it turned out, we love hearing from our readers! You can also follow along with me on PINTEREST, FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM to see more amazing recipes and what shenanigans I’m getting into!
Rainbow Buttercream
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter softened
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- pinch fine sea salt
- 2 tablespoons whole milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- red gel food coloring
- blue gel food coloring
- yellow gel food coloring
- green gel food coloring
- purple gel food coloring
Instructions
- Place the butter in the body of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Whip the butter until smooth.
- Add the powdered sugar a little at a time until fully incorporated. Scrape down the sides.
- Add the salt, milk, and vanilla extract. Stir it in until combined, then whip on medium-high speed for 3 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Divide the buttercream between 5 small bowls. Add a different food color into each bowl and mix until the desired color is achieved, take note that the color will darken slightly as it sits.
- Take 5 pastry bags or gallon-sized bags and add the different color frosting to each of the bags.
- Place a piece of plastic wrap on your work surface. Snip off the ends of the bags and pipe about 1-inch sized stripes of frosting around 8 inches long. One color after the other touching until you have 5 stripes.
- Carefully roll the plastic wrap over itself so the frosting forms a log, overlapping the plastic wrap. Twist both ends to seal the frosting in place.
- Get a large pastry bag secured with a 1M open star tip. Snip off one edge of the log of frosting and gently place it into the pastry bag.
- Frost cupcakes in the pattern you desire. Serve immediately.
Notes
- You can use any colors that you'd like, we listed the exact colors we used above.
- This is great on cupcakes or as a garnish to top other desserts.
- This can be frozen, see my tips above.
- The frosting will make enough to generously frost 12 cupcakes.
- You can absolutely double this recipe to have more on hand.
- You will need to make 2-3 of the frosting logs because it is too much frosting to make one large log, the end result will not be the same.
Nutrition
Tornadough Alli is not a nutritionist or dietitian, and any nutritional information shared is an estimate. If calorie count and nutritional value is important to you, we recommend running the ingredients through whichever online nutritional calculator you prefer. Calories and values can vary depending on which brands were used.
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