Vanilla Rainbow Buns

Everyone loves colour, especially bright colours so what could be more exciting than these moist and fluffy Vanilla Rainbow Buns? Although not the most obvious choice for a cake, these are fun to create and little kids, big kids (my friends, despite at 19 one is an 'autonomous adult') and even bigger kids (my dad!) alike will enjoy these crazy colourful cakes.

This recipe will make 12 large muffin sized cakes or one 7" cake.

 

Ingredients 

100g unsalted butter

100g sugar

100g self-raising flour

2 medium eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking powder
assortment of food colourings

Directions

Pre heat oven to 160 degrees c. Cream together butter, sugar and vanilla extract then whisk in eggs and sift in the flour. Mix until you have a light fluffy cake batter. If you find the batter to be too thick add milk and stir again. 

Now divide the cake batter equally into four bowls (or as many bowls as you have colours) and add a few drops (you can alter the intensity of the colour by adding fewer or more drops) of a different food colouring to each bowl - or to make your buns even crazier combine different food colourings to make all sorts of different colours! Mix the colouring in well and add batter to individual bun cases one colour at a time. I suggest adding one tsp of one coloured batter to each bun case, washing the spoon and recommencing with the next colour e.t.c. until the bun cases are almost full or you have run out of mixture - which ever comes first!

Finally take a chop stick or something of a similar thickness, insert into the mixture in the middle of the bun case until the chop stick is almost touching the bottom of the case and use it to swirl the batter in a circular motion. One 360 degree turn should do the trick - be careful not to overdo the swirling as this can cause the colours to blend into each other too much.

Place in oven for 35 to 40 minutes if making one 7" cake in one tin or for about 20 minutes if making Vanilla Rainbow Buns.

Note: Normally I go mad for fancy, coloured bun cases (I found some cracking space themed ones with an alien design in home bargains), but I find using white paper cases with these buns doesn't induce boring-bun-case-sadness as they tend to take up some of the colour from the mixture and you end up with groovy multicoloured marble effect cases!