Pink food colouring issue

Hi all fellow bakers - I'm absolutely baffled as to why my pink velvet cupcakes turn out pink on the top and normal yellowish cake colour inside ? I have used two different types of food colouring - liquid and paste and get the same result. The batter is lovely and pink when I put them in the oven and look lovely when I take them out, until I look inside one of them . Therefore I found this website and thought I'd register in the hopes that there would be a few well seasoned bakers out there who would be able to resolve the mystery!

Hi Madame Butterfly,

Welcome to CU. Frgive me asking but why did you have to pick such a small typeface? I had to change my specs to read it!

Best wishes,

A.

Sorry I wasn't aware that I had used a small font - this message is in Comic Sans LARGE font! It's also in bold which is what I thought my original message was in - I had to copy and paste your message into word and enlarge it!

Regards,

Madamebutterfly.

Dear Madambutterfly,

Thanks for moving to the larger typeface!

Looking at your colouring problem, uneven colouring can come from several sources, the quality of the colouring materials, the degree of mixing in of the colour so it is evenly distributed, or a chemical reaction with another ingredient. Perhaps if you could tell us the recipe you followed and some details of how you mixed it may give us a clue.

Best wishes,

A.

Hi Androcles - here's the recipe - I mixed it all well enough so that the whole batter was definitely pink with no streaks anywhere and gave it a good beat as per instructions!

1 cup of butter softened
1 1/3 cups sugar
Pink food coloring
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk

Add in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add in vanilla and beat well.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the batter and beat until well combined. Add in 1/2 of the butter milk, beat until combined, followed by another 1/3 of the dry, then the remaining buttermilk and finally the remaining dry ingredients. The batter may look a bit lumpy after buttermilk is first added, but beat well and it will combine nicely.

Fill paper lined muffin cups two-thirds full and bake at 350 degrees for approx 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Watch the cupcakes closely in the last few minutes of baking so that they do not over brown. Allow to cool for ten minutes before removing from pan, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Regards,

M

Warning: this message will probably not be much help...
There's one kind of food colouring you haven't tried, and it's the one I always use: gel food colouring.
But frankly these cupcakes sound cool the way they came out. I bet I couldn't get that result if I tried ;) Embrace the strangeness because it sounds beautiful!