Candy Corn Cupcakes

• Serves: 16
• Prep Time: not long, maybe 15 minutes
• Total Time: About an hour, max.

Ingredients

• 2 cups sugar (I use organic)
• 4 eggs (I use Eggland's Best)
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I use unbleached flour)
• 1 cup milk (I always use fat free milk)
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil (canola is on my shelf)
• 2-1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• divided
• 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon orange gel food coloring (on the baking aisle or in the "party" section at WalMart)
• Premade Icing - vanilla or cream cheese (or you can make your own)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 (12 cup) cupcake pans with 16 cupcake liners

In a large mixing bowl, with an electric mixer, beat sugar and eggs together until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.
Add flour, milk, oil, baking powder, and vanilla and beat for another minute, just until the batter is smooth and creamy. Don't over beat.

Place approximately 1/3 of the batter into a separate bowl. Add orange gel dye to the reserved batter and mix well.
Fill each muffin liner with 2 tablespoons of plain vanilla cake batter. Layer over 1 tablespoon of orange-dyed batter onto each. Using a toothpick, gently drag the orange batter through the plain vanilla batter, creating a streaked look. Do not over do it or batters will blend together.

Bake in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until the tops are golden and a toothpick poked into the center of the layer comes out clean.

For a artsy presentation, place frosting into a zipper-type plastic bag with the corner snipped off. Pipe icing onto each cooled cupcake and top with a couple of candy corns for each cupcake. I just "artistically" dolloped a spoonful of icing on each cup cake.