Indian Tricolor Cupcakes

Jan 24, 2015, Updated May 07, 2023

Cupcakes in Indian Tricolor for India's Republic Day + a tutorial on how to make Tie Dye Cupcakes and make 3 Color Swirls!

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Happy Saturday everyone! What are you plans for the weekend? Doing something exciting? Back home in India, it’s actually Republic Day weekend and if I was there I would be looking forward to watch the parade on TV and oh and if you guys aren’t already aware, US President is our chief guest this Republic Day! Dad was telling me it’s pretty crazy in Delhi right now with the security and everything.

And so because it’s our Republic Day on 26th January, I had to make these tricolor cupcakes or tiranga cupcakes as we would call in Hindi. Of course I could have made any tricolor food but since I love making & decorating cupcakes, I didn’t have much choice! Next year maybe! Last year I made these tricolor cookies and that was the first time I actually worked with royal icing. I remember being so excited after I was done decorating the cookies. Oh by the way please ignore those crappy pictures of the cookies but in a way it makes me happy that I have come this far in a year but there’s still a LOT to learn.

Anyway these are simple vanilla cupcakes, I used a box mix for these. I generally never use a box for baking but sometimes you just want to do things quickly and it’s then that the box mix comes in handy. You can very well use this vanilla cupcakes recipe on my blog and make cupcakes from scratch. I created a tie dye effect in the cupcakes and I did it basically in 2 ways which I will explain below. The tricolor cupcakes were topped with tricolor swirls of basic butter cream frosting.

This is exactly how you make tie dye cupcakes as well. You can use as many colors as you want or use colors according to occasions. They are super easy to make and look very festive. Like for Valentine’s Day you can do red, white and pink or for Christmas you can do red, green and white.

To make the swirls I used wilton tip #2D, which is basically my favorite tip for decorating cupcakes. You make swirls applying constant pressure and if you want more ruffles, apply more pressure. I tell you cake decorating is all about pressure control. I hope you like this mini tutorial.

Method

Prepare cupcake batter using a box mix [follow instructions on the box] or use your favorite recipe to make a batch of vanilla cupcakes. Divide the batter into 3 equal parts. Color 2 parts of the batter with green and orange color respectively. Leave the 3rd part as such.

Now there are two ways you can make these tricolor cupcakes.

Place the green color batter at the bottom of the cupcake pan/liner.

Place orange color batter next, on top of the green batter.

And lastly put the white color batter on top.

Drop random spoons of different color batter in the cupcake pan/liner. Just be careful that you don’t drop the same color adjacent to each other.

Once the cupcake liner is 2/3 full, take a toothpick and make swirls just like in the middle picture above.

And that’s how the cupcakes will look when they are ready to go in the oven.

Bake the cupcakes according to instruction of the package or the recipe you are following. Once baked, cool the cupcakes completely before frosting them. The bake cupcakes will have different patterns and look like this. Colorful, isn’t it?

Prepare buttercream frosting by following the instructions here. Once the frosting is done, divide it into 3 parts and color accordingly.

1. Green: This part should have the maximum frosting as we use green to cover the outer rim of cupcakes.

2. White: Basically you don’t color one part of the frosting and the quantity should be lesser than the green part.

3. Orange: Lastly color the frosting in orange color. Since we will make a small swirl with orange color on top, this part should be the least in amount.

And now it’s time to decorate the cupcakes!

Fill three piping bags fitted with Wilton tip #2D with the 3 color frostings.

– Take the green color frosting piping bag and make swirl [make 2 swirls for extra ruffles/frills] on the outer edge of the cupcake, starting from one point on the edge.

– Now take the white color frosting piping bag and make swirl on top of the green swirl. This swirl should be smaller than the one below it.

– And finally take the orange color frosting and make a swirl on top of the white swirl. This should be the smallest swirl.

Decorate with some white decorating balls. I place the white balls only on the orange part of the frosting, you can decorate in whatever way you want.

* The frosting shouldn’t be too thin else you won’t be able to make these nice swirls. Add only 1 tablespoon of milk/cream at first and add more only if the frosting looks stiff.