Fruit Loop cupcakes: raspberry-lime-orange with vanilla buttercream and toasted coconut

I've always loved the way multicolored cupcakes look, but I rarely feel like making plain vanilla cupcakes. So I took some inspiration from rainbow sherbet and decided to make multicolored cupcakes in which each color was a different flavor - raspberry, lime, and orange. Whoo!

The recipe: I've been using the joyofbaking.com vanilla cupcake recipe, which is good, but this time I tried Amy Sedaris's recipe (via Chockylit's Cupcake Bakeshop), which is delicious. Lovely texture.

How I altered the recipe: I went ahead and made a 2/3 batch (which yielded 12 cupcakes). Then I split that up into three separate bowls, and colored and flavored each one individually. I used about 3/4 t raspberry extract for the raspberry part and 1 1/2 T lime or orange zest plus maybe 2 1/2 T lime or orange juice (just squeezed from the fruit) for the lime and orange parts, respectively.

After that, you just spoon a layer of each flavor into each cupcake paper in the muffin tin, and you get cool swirly psychedelic cupcakes.

Here are their lovely purple raspberry-flavored tops, with a little green showing...

And here you can see ze beautiful layers.

I happened to be wearing bright green shorts and purple flip flops that day, so had to take a "My cupcakes and I, we match!" photo.



And theen, I made some vanilla buttercream for the frosting and toasted some coconut flakes in the oven to put on top. Voila!

The verdict: I really, really like this vanilla cupcake recipe. I might try a couple more of the vanilla recipes standard on the cupcake blogosphere, but I can definitely see myself sticking with this one. Nice and soft inside with just a hint of crustiness on the top.

As for the execution of the sherbet notion, the cupcakes tasted quite nice. My roommate said they tasted like Fruit Loops, and I agree. The orange and lime parts weren't as flavorful as the raspberry, though, which goes to show how well juice and zest work versus extract.

What I'd do differently next time: Next time, I'd use orange extract for the orange part. I don't know if lime extract can be found at ordinary grocery stores, so I'd use it if I had it, but if not, I guess I'd put in more lime zest. I'd tone down the amount of extract in each batch, because the raspberry, while quite yummy, was a little too strong for me.