4th of July Cupcakes!!

It's not too late to bake these for your 4th of July get together!! Especially if you want to WOW people!

I used the vanilla cupcake recipe and the vanilla buttercream recipe from joyofbaking.com. Then I divided the batter into three bowls and added blue, and red food coloring to two of the bowls. I used the gel food coloring but anything will do. Be prepared to use a lot of red coloring!

I did the same thing for the icing as I did for the batter, divide into three bowls then add red and blue coloring to two of the bowls. After you mix the icing, to get the swirlyness, divide the icing into three different sections in the pastry bag. I used a butter knife to get the icing into the pastry bag. I also used a giant french style tip. The icing will swirl when you pipe it! I topped with 4th of July sprinkles and red and blue pop rocks.

I made these yesterday afternoon and by 10:00 last night the pop rocks had melted (sadness) I still say use them because they're really cool, but just throw them on there right before you serve these babies!

And this is what they look cut in half! Pretty nifty!