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Our local community has a Flag Day parade every year and before the parade, I hold a cook-out picnic for some family, neighbors and friends. 

This year I decided I wanted to make an easy but very festive dessert. Something that would be convenient to serve but wouldn’t take all day to prepare.  I came up with a basic recipe for red, white and blue cupcakes. I had seen a similar idea in a home magazine and just adapted the idea to what I wanted.

 

Easy Red, White and Blue Cupcakes

1 box cake mix prepared according to box directions
Red food coloring
Blue food coloring
White homemade or all-ready prepared frosting

 

Begin by mix up the cake batter according the directions on the back of the box. Then evenly divide the batter into three equal bowls.

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Add the red food coloring to one bowl and the blue food coloring to another bowl. Stir well. 

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Carefully drop one tablespoon of each color into a prepared muffin tin.

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Bake according to the directions on the back of the cake mix.  Allow to cool before frosting.

I ran out of time making these so I had to quick whip something up for the frosting.  I ended up using a cream cheese frosting and placed a dollop on top of each cupcake. I carefully spread the frosting out into a small circle and then using the handle part on my fork, just made a star in the top of the frosting.  I think that if I had had time to use pipe able frosting, I could have made a better looking star on the top of these.  I didn’t have any mini flags available but I could see inserting a small tooth pick American flag in the middle of the cupcakes if you didn’t want to try making your own star.

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Look how pretty the paper wrapper looks!

These were easy to make, looked great and were very festive.  I could see mixing up the colors for different holidays like Easter (pink, blue and white), Christmas (red and green), Thanksgiving (yellow, orange and brown) etc.