Tie Dyed Cupcakes, Part 2

Now that the cupcakes are baked and cooled, it's time to do the icing.  I got the step-by-step instructions HERE, and it was a lot easier than I expected it would be.  You will use gel or paste food colouring for the icing, rather than the liquid dye used for the cupcakes.  However, they are MUCH harder to mix to obtain a good orange, and purple was out of the question.  I could not find a good mix of red and blue that worked at all, even when I used the tiniest dot of blue with the red (applied on the point of a toothpick, no less). The blue was just way too overpowering, so I didn't use purple and didn't really miss it.

I found a decorating kit with tips and disposable bags.  Disposable icing bags are a must for this project.  I ended up using 4 of them.

I got 2 cans, 'just in case', but only ended up using one.

Use a glass to hold the empty icing bag upright.

Using a stiff-bristle paintbrush, paint the gel dyes into stripes on the inside walls of the icing bag. Then scoop the icing into the bag and squeeze it from the top down to the tip. Don't push the icing down with the spoon because that might mess up the colour stripes. Squeeze out the first bit of icing into a bowl till the colours start coming out.

That's what the icing looks like with the colour streaks.

My "palette".  The smudges on the left was the attempt at purple.

VOILA!!!!  The first two uses of the icing is the most vibrant.  Then it starts to get a little more pastel as you go.  I used 4 disposable icing bags for 1 batch of 12 muffins, to keep the colours as rich as possible.

I know my icing technique isn't terribly good, but I'm pretty pleased with the final results!!!  I was so excited that I was dancing around the kitchen, squealing and saying, 'COME LOOK! COME LOOK!" to the squeeze.  He took one look at the plate and said, "Boy those sure have 'hippie' written aaaallll over them...."   

He said  these looked like "Heat Miser Hair", which is funny because I thought the same thing.  lol

I used one bag with just green and blue dye for a couple of them.  Not sure what I was going for with that green and blue design...sorta looks like a sea anemone.  

And sampling the final result!!!  Nom nom nom nom

I can't emphasize enough how much fun this baking project was.  Easier than I thought, but definitely time consuming. So worth the end results though!