Colorful Stuffed Vanilla Cupcakes

1. Make the vanilla cupcake batter. Divide the batter in half and set aside one portion. Divide the other half into several small bowls.
2. Stir in gel food coloring into each bowl. Add coloring slowly and work up to the saturation of your choice.
3. Grease your cake pop pan with nonstick cooking spray. Pour the cake batter in filling the tray a tiny bit less than halfway. Cover with the other half of the baking tray. Bake according to the recipe directions. Use a toothpick to check doneness through the little vent holes at the top of the pan. Remove from pan and let cool completely on wire rack.
4. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners. Add a spoonful of the uncolored cake batter to each liner to act as ‘glue’ to keep the cake pop-centered. Spoon the rest of the batter around each cake ball, filling each halfway.
5. Bake recipe according to recipe directions, using a toothpick to check the uncolored part for doneness. Remove from cupcake pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.
6. To get the frosting look in these pictures, use a large round piping tip to pipe a large swirl of frosting on top of each cupcake. Use the back of a small offset spatula to push down the center in a circular motion to create an indent and swirl. Sprinkle with sprinkles before the frosting sets.

Tips: If you’re short on time, boxed cake mix will work beautifully for this recipe. You don’t need extra batter to make these stuffed cupcakes. The cake pop balls in the photos are a bit…shaggy because I forgot to grease my pan. They still turned out beautifully and you couldn’t tell at all in the cupcakes. If you have a little edge on the baked cake pops from them leaking between the two pan halves, just use kitchen shears to trim them.