This is the final day of the second week of Vegan MoFo, where the theme is “behind the scenes.” So far this week, we’ve talked about picking the best unicorn cookie cutters, vegan sprinkles, given you a behind the scenes aquafaba video on Instagram, shared a pitch for the cookbook I am writing, and a look at a rainbow layered unicorn cake.

Today is all about frosting, unicorns practically subsist on the stuff!

Our favorite frostings tend to be like buttercream but veganized to exclude real butter or even palm-laden margarine and vegetable shortening by using solid coconut oil instead. I’ve sort of perfected the recipe, but want to wait a bit to share it.

Today I’ll talk about how to get a real rainbowy look out of whatever vegan frosting you most prefer.

You can use any type of colorant you want, but I’m partial to beet powder for red (or using a fruity powder too, such as freeze-dried strawberry or raspberry powder), turmeric for yellow, matcha for green (tastes way better than spirulina in a frosting, trust me!), butterfly pea tea powder for blue, and either acai or a mix of a red and blue powder for purple.

I have found it easiest to get results like what was pictured above with only 3 colors of the rainbow rather than them all. The reason for this is actually, that if you mix all of the colors of the rainbow together, you get a muddy, ugly, poopy brown. And not the beautiful colored poop of a unicorn, either.

The easiest way to swirl the three colors together is to use a pastry bag with a frosting tip attached (these things always confuse me, so read the directions if you don’t know how to properly set this up). Mix in the colors into frosting placed in three separate bowls or however you want to do it, just keep it separated somehow. Then take a rubber spatula, and spread a big glob of frosting down one side of the bag. Then take the other color, and place a globby stripe of frosting down the next side. Repeat until the bag is filled up with all the colors. They should touch each other and extend down towards the frosting tip.

Then, squeeze out the frosting to the desired amount you like on your cupcakes, using the picture I posted as a guide, or not. They may not all look the same depending on how you layered the frosting colors in the bag. I think it’s more magical when each one looks unique.

They also sell a kit at craft stores from Wilton which is designed to help you make rainbow-swirled frosting more “easily” but I found it more of a pain to use than this option.

Enjoy and have fun!