Instructions

1. Make a batch of cupcakes.  You can use a cake box mix, we have all the instructions you’ll need to make them taste just like homemade right here. Or you can make them from scratch with our yummy Homemade Chocolate Cupcakes recipe.  We used chocolate cupcakes but Vanilla Cupcakes would taste great too.
2. The key to these delicious cupcakes is our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe.   It is light and creamy and buttery and super delicious! You will find the recipe and directions here.  One batch of frosting will be enough to frost 12 cupcakes.  If you used a boxed cake mix, you should have about 18 cupcakes and will need to double the frosting recipe.  Once you have the frosting made, split it into four portions.  Because the four layers of the frosting swirl are not all the same size we portioned our single batch of frosting as follows: Red:  3/4 cup Orange: 3/4 cup Gold: 1/2 cup White: 1/2 cup.
3. Now it is time to tint the frosting. We like the Wilton Color Right Food Coloring.  It is concentrated and you can get a bright color without having to use too much food coloring.  Here are the formulas we used for our Thanksgiving/Fall frosting colors: Red – 10 drops of Red and 4 drops of Crimson, Orange –6 drops of Orange and 2 drops of Red, Gold –6 drops of Yellow and 1 drop of Orange, White - No food coloring.
4. Load the four colors of frosting into separate decorating bags with a Wilton 1M Open Star Decorating Tip and gather up your cupcakes!
5. For each cupcake, you will make four swirls of the frosting.  The red on the bottom then orange, then gold, and finally white.
6. With the decorating bag and the 1M tip, make one and a half circles of red frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
7. Next apply another 1 1/2 circles of orange frosting but this circle should be a little smaller than the red frosting layer as shown in the picture above.
8. Repeat the process again, this time with the gold frosting.
   Finally, with the white frosting, add a fourth circle but this time finish with an upward flourish so that the swirl ends in a peak at the top.