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Our easy-to-make red white and blue Patriotic Swirl Cupcakes are perfect for a 4th of July party or Memorial Day barbecue and taste amazing.

Closeup on five Patriotic Swirl Cupcakes sitting on a white table in front of a cupcake tin filled with chocolate cupcakes.

Our Swirl Cupcakes are one of our favorite tried and true go-to desserts. They are super pretty and you can make them in so many great color combinations.  And of all our amazing frosting recipes, our Best Buttercream Frosting is the one friends and family request the most.  That is why we know that this Red White and Blue Patriotic Swirl Cupcakes version of this great cupcake is going to be a big hit at our 4th of July party.

Ingredients You Will Need

All the ingredients you will need to make Patriotic Swirl Cupcakes including chocolate cupcakes, buttercream frosting, blue and red food coloring and red cupcake liners.

How to Make the Cupcakes

Closeup of a dozen chocolate cupcakes in white cupcake liners on a white table.

Step 1: Make a batch of cupcakes.  You can use a cake box mix, we have all the instructions you’ll need to make them taste just like homemade right here. Or you can make them from scratch with our yummy Homemade Chocolate Cupcakes recipe.  We used chocolate cupcakes but Vanilla Cupcakes would taste great too.

How to Make the Frosting

Closeup on a glass bowl filled with homemade Buttercream Frosting sitting next to a decorating bag filled with Buttercream Frosting.

Step 2: The key to these delicious cupcakes is our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe.   It is light and creamy and buttery and super delicious! You will find the recipe and directions here.  One batch of frosting will be enough to frost 12 cupcakes.  If you used a boxed cake mix, you should have about 18 cupcakes and will need to double the frosting recipe.  Once you have the frosting made, split it into thirds.  Because the three layers of the frosting swirl are not all the same size we portioned our single batch of frosting as follows:

Red:  1 cup
White: 3/4 cups
Blue: 1/2 cup

How to Color the Frosting

Collage image showing the food coloring formulas to make Red White and Blue Buttercream Frosting.

Now it is time to tint the frosting. We like the Wilton Color Right Food Coloring.  It is concentrated and you can get a bright color without having to use too much food coloring.  Here are the formulas we used for our 4th of July themed Red White and Blue frosting colors:

Blue: 10 drops of Blue and 2 drops of Red.
Red: 10 drops of Red and 4 drops of Crimson.
White: No food coloring.

Putting it All Together

Chocolate cupcake in a red cupcake liner sitting on a white table alongside three decorating bags filled with frosting and a cupcake tin filled with cupcakes.

Step 4: Load the three colors of frosting into separate decorating bags with a Wilton 1M Open Star Decorating Tip and gather up your cupcakes!

Collage image showing how to make the multi-colored swirl of frosting for the Patriotic Swirl Cupcake.

Step 5:  For each Patriotic Swirl Cupcake, you will make three swirls of the frosting.  Red on the bottom, then white, and finally blue.
Step 6:  With the decorating bag and the 1M tip, make one and a half circles of red frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
Step 7:  Next apply another 1 1/2 circles of white frosting but this circle should be a little smaller than the red frosting layer as shown in the picture above.
Step 8: Finally, with the blue frosting, add a third circle but this time finishing with an upward flourish so that the swirl ends in a peak at the top.

You can watch a video of how to make a frosting swirl like this in our How to Frost Cupcakes post.

Expert Tips and FAQ’s

How far ahead of a party can you make these cupcakes?

Ideally, you should make the cupcakes the day before the party. You can store them in the refrigerator but remember to take them out a couple of hours before you are going to serve them because a cold cupcake is not a good cupcake. If you are short on time, you could make the cupcakes further ahead and freeze them until the day before the party and then defrost them and frost them the day before the party.

Do the cupcakes have to be refrigerated?

No. They will be fine left out at room temperature. Day one and two, they will taste great. On day three, the frosting will start to be hard on the outside and the cupcakes will start to get a little bit stale but they will still taste fine. After day four … the cupcakes will be stale. You can get another day or two out of them by storing them in the refrigerator.

Closeup of a Patriotic Swirl Cupcake with Red White and Blue Buttercream Frosting sitting in front of other 4th of July cupcakes.

Other 4th of July Desserts You Will Love

Did you Make This Recipe? Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @twosisterscrafting on Instagram so we can see it!

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Patriotic Swirl CupcakesPrint

Patriotic Swirl Cupcakes

Yield 18 cupcakes
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 18 minutes
Total Time 33 minutes

Our easy to make red white and blue Patriotic Swirl Cupcakes are perfect for a 4th of July party or Memorial Day barbecue and taste amazing.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Make a batch of cupcakes.
  2. Make two batches of our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe.
  3. Split the batch of frosting into thirds. The first third we left white and we tinted the other two red and blue.
  4. Using a Wilton 2D frosting tip, make two full circles of red frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
  5. Next, use the Wilton 2D frosting tip with the white frosting. Apply two more circles of frosting but these should be a little smaller than the red frosting layer.
  6. Finally, add a final two circles of blue frosting, this time swirling the top up into a peak.

Did you Make this Recipe? Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @twosisterscrafting on Instagram so we can see it!

© Two Sisters Crafting
Cuisine: American / Category: Cupcakes