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Say, “Happy Fourth!” with these Red, White, and Blue Cupcakes. These are moist, sweet cupcakes topped with a tangy, creamy frosting. If you’re looking for a festive cake option to decorate your dessert table, you must try my Flag Cake.
Red, White, and Blue Cupcakes | With Cream Cheese Frosting
Happy 4th of July!
You guys, these Red, White, and Blue Cupcakes are the bomb dot com. My go-to vanilla cupcake recipe is pimped out with food coloring, killer cream cheese frosting, and sprinkles! Nothing says summer holiday quite like sugar on sugar on sugar. Basically, every kids’ dreams come true.
I brought these to a BBQ a few nights ago and people ended up fighting over them. Like mother against daughter “give me a bite of your cupcake!!” I think they were surprised that a plain old vanilla cupcake could taste that awesome. Moist, sweet, and tender cake with a tangy, perfectly sweet, and cream cheese frosting. Simplicity at its best. AND, you probably have all the ingredients on hand 🙂 Cha-ching! Money in the bank. Just be sure to NOT over-bake the cupcakes and to use Philly cream cheese.
Main Ingredients Needed
You’ll likely have everything you need in your pantry already. Here is what you’ll need for these Red, White, and Blue Cupcakes:
- Egg Whites + Baking Powder – our leavening agents in this recipe. Leavening agents help with structure.
- Butter – softened, used for moisture and flavor. I like to use salted but feel free to use unsalted.
- Granulated Sugar – to sweeten and keep things light.
- Vanilla – for flavoring.
- All Purpose Flour – to fill out and give volume to the cupcakes
- Salt – helps to balance out and enhance all the flavors.
- Milk – helps with moisture and brings the dry ingredients together.
- Food Coloring – red and blue, used to color the batter. I like using gel food colorant because a little goes a long way but liquid food coloring will work too!
For the Cream Cheese Frosting:
- Philadelphia Cream Cheese – at room temperature. Tangy, creamy deliciousness!
- Butter – softened, for smooth texture.
- Powdered Sugar – to sweeten without gritty texture.
- Vanilla – to flavor.
- Sprinkles – optional but super fun for kids! Use what you have or order special sprinkles for an event.
Can I Use Different Colors?
The beauty of this recipe is that you don’t *have* to use red and blue food coloring! All my Canadian friends could do red and white for Canada Day too! OR, you could pick out some favorite colors and turn these into birthday cupcakes. Consider this a tie-dye type of recipe (kinda like these Mini Tie Dye Cheesecakes)! The possibilities are seriously endless!
How To Make Red, White, and Blue Cupcakes
Here you’ll find the step-by-step directions for making the cupcakes and frosting. For full complete details and measurements, see the printable recipe card at the bottom of the post.
Step 1: Preheat + Prep
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with paper liners and set it aside.
Step 2: Make Cake Batter
In a large bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Set aside.
In another large bowl, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, for 2 minutes. Stir in vanilla.
In a small bowl, combine the dry ingredients. With the mixer on low, alternate adding in the dry ingredients with the milk until none remain. Scrape sides to ensure even mixing. Fold in whipped egg whites.
Step 3: Divide + Color Batter
Divide batter between 3 different bowls. Stir red food coloring into one and blue into another one. I tried to find a balance between bright-colored cupcakes vs tastes like gross food coloring cupcakes.
Step 4: Bake + Cool
Alternating between the white, red, and blue cake batters, spoon into prepared cupcake pans, alternating colors. Once muffin tins are filled 3/4 of the way, bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean after being inserted. Set aside to cool completely.
Step 5: Make Cream Cheese Frosting
Beat cream cheese and butter together to combine. Stir in powdered sugar and vanilla. Scrape sides and beat for 3 minutes until the frosting lightens in color and thickens slightly. Frost cooled cupcakes and top with sprinkles.
After you pull the paper liners off, kids go NUTS for these!
Storing Red, White, and Blue Cupcakes
Because the frosting has cream cheese in it, I would recommend storing these in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days!
More Fourth of July Desserts!
ANYWAYS, enjoy your day! Hopefully, these will be in your near future!
The printable recipe card is down below 🙂
4th of July Cupcakes
Ingredients
for the cupcakes-
- 4 large egg whites
- 1/2 cup butter softened
- 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup milk
- food coloring red and blue
for the frosting-
- 8 oz cream cheese at room temperature (Philadelphia brand is preferred)
- 1/2 cup salted butter softened
- 2 1/3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- sprinkles optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with paper liners and set aside.
- In a large bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Set aside.
- In another large bowl, beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, 2 minutes. Stir in vanilla.
- In a small bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Alternate stirring in the dry ingredients with the milk until none remain. Scrape sides to ensure even mixing.
- Fold in whipped egg whites.
- Divide batter between 3 different bowls. Stir red food coloring into one and blue into another one.
- Alternating between the white, red, and blue cake batters, spoon into prepared cupcake pans, alternating colors. Once muffin tins are filled 3/4 of the way, bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean after being inserted. Set aside to cool.
- For the frosting, beat cream cheese and butter together to combine. Stir in powdered sugar and vanilla. Scrape sides and beat for 3 minutes until the frosting lightens in color and thickens slightly.
- Frost cooled cupcakes and top with sprinkles.
Fun idea. I used this recipe to make cupcakes for a graduation. I used the school colors for the cupcakes which turned out fun. The cake turned out pretty tasty, but the frosting recipe could use improvement as it was runny. I’ll try again with a different frosting.
[…] Red, White, and Blue Cupcakes by Lauren’s Latest […]
I just made these for my 4th of July party, can’t wait to see how they turn out!
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I admit…I was making a bunch of desserts for a large party, so made the cake part with (gasp!) a cake mix. Don’t usually do that, but it was a time thing. Will definitely try the cake-part of this recipe here, fairly soon though.
I did, however, make the frosting. I’m a sucker for all things cream-cheese and just couldn’t resist. It was very simple and had fantastic flavor. My only “complaint”, which I hesitate to use that word, is that on MY mini-cupcakes, the icing was runnier than I was expecting, so it didn’t set-up as nicely as I’d hoped. Perhaps I did something wrong, because I confess, as careful as I try to be, I had several different recipes going at once, so it’s not out of the question that I could have messed up.
Perhaps, Lauren, you will chime in and say whether or not this frosting is a tad on the runny side…and by runny, I don’t mean it was melting…just enough that I was considering adding confectioner’s sugar. Chilling it didn’t help much.
Still, it was uber-yummy and I will make it again and play around with it to get the consistency I prefer.
[…] Blue Milk Pops from Taste and Tell (pictured above) Sweet 4th of July Party from Cookies and Cups Layered Red, White and Blue Cupcakes from Lauren’s Latest Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches from The Decorated Cookie 4th […]
These are so pretty – perfect for the 4th of July! 🙂
These are so cute! I love patriotic themed desserts 🙂 They look delicious!
So easy, perfect and festive. Love the rainbowness of it all! 🙂
These look so delicious and festive.
These look so fabulous…cupcakes are an undeniable weakness of mine.
Loved meeting you at BlogHer food and sharing the Trace dinner together.
Hope all is well in Portland…give a shout if you get back up to Seattle and we’ll grab a drink!
Cool cupcakes!!
I love your blog. You come up with some fun and easy recipes. I made the cupcakes and the frosting. Everything turned out great and tasted good. My only question is I have a lot of left over frosting. Just wondering how that happened. I made 18 regular size cupcakes and frosted them generously.
I typically always use a piping bag and doing that will make me use more frosting. Crack out the graham crackers and dig in!
Yup! I am so going to make these for the 4th of July this year! Many thanks!!!
Very cute!
These cupcakes are beautiful and surely delicious too.
Adorable and delicious! I’m hoping to make a red, white and blue battenberg cake today.
The swirls are pretty and fun! My neices and nephews would love to make these with me for the fourth. Great thinking!
How fun! They’re so gorgeous, too gorgeous to eat actually!
Those are the cutest and most fun cupcakes!!! I love biting into “surprise” cupcakes! And that frosting is to die for…so fluffy!!!
Voted for your picture – good luck!
These cupcakes are so cute! I love the colors in there. I will be saving this to try in a couple weeks. I am making cupcakes and need a killer vanilla cupcake recipe. Thanks!
Your cupcakes are beautiful! I’ve got to try this sometime.
These look so good and they’re so cute!!
these are so pretty and unique!! definitely making these 🙂
Lauren, I just love these. I first made layered, tie-dye cupcakes last year. They are MUCH easier than one would expect. And fool-proof CC Frosting is definitely a recipe to save. these look wonderful Lauren, and without a doubt – the showstopper dessert at any 4th of July party.
Forget about the kiddies, this has me jumping off the wall!! Great recipe, I’ll be makin these for Canada’s Day … minus the blue ofcourse 😉 … but then a couple days later it doesn’t hurt to add the blue and celebrate the 4th of July too!!
These are so fun! Perfect for the 4th!
So pretty and perfect for the 4th!
Love it! The blue inside the cupcakes is genius. 🙂
So pretty! Definitely the perfect 4th of July BBQ treat. 🙂
These are the cutest cupcakes ever! Even though I’m a chocolate nut usually, these vanilla cupcakes look so moist and delicious, not to mention festive! I’m a sucker for cream cheese frosting too…
These are SO adorable!!! Way to go on the swirls. 🙂
I could live in that frosting. Like actually make a little bed and sleep there.
Awesome, girl!
This is such a great idea, I’m not surprised they went down so well. It’s very hard to beat a good vanilla cupcake.
These are SO cute! And thanks for thinking of your Canadian friends too 😉