Baking FAIL

Steve's birthday is on Monday & I have a work meeting/Christmas party at the Y the same night.  I signed up to bring a dessert & figured it would give me an excuse to bake something for Steve's birthday.  I came across this recipe for rainbow cupcakes.  FUN!  How cute do they look?  The recipe looked like something I could handle, especially considering my typically unskillful kitchen skills.  I figured I was taking them to a work party, so even if they didn't turn out as pretty as shown on the original website, as long as they tasted ok, they would be eaten.  Well, the following pictures will tell the story...

So colorful!  The batter separated & dosed with food coloring.

Continuing with the prettiness into the oven...

Epic FAIL.  My cupcakes look like the remnants of rainbow vomit.  I'll cover them up with frosting - I'm going to attempt this fun colorful idea for frosting - & no one will notice the difference (& hopefully they'll enjoy all the fun colors in the cupcake).  Don't get me wrong, they taste great.

With my perfectionist personality, I'm not going to let this fall by the wayside.  I want to try it again until I achieve the perfect rainbow cupcake.  I think one problem was pouring the different color batter in the cupcake tin; instead of pouring each color into the center of the previous color, I should try to cover the previous color entirely with the next color (not spreading it, as it says not to).  Other than that, I'm not sure what I did wrong.  Ah well, I'll keep trying.  Until then, I'll bake something different for Steve's birthday.