Family Strong: St. Patrick's Cupcakes

I have been super into cupcakes lately. Not necessarily eating them, I just love to make cake and enjoy decorating. It is a very rusty skill that I am honing back into a little. I have a friend with a birthday this weekend, so what better treat than green cupcakes!

I used to decorate cakes a lot when the kiddos were little. It was so much more cost effective to make and decorate their birthday/party cakes that I got pretty decent at it: I would never attempt to do a cake for anything professional (though I did do my brother-in-laws wedding reception cake once, and it looked great) I have great fun in the creations. Cupcakes are even more fun than cakes IMO, because their little serving sizes of amazingness and if you have the time each one is a new creation.

I kept these cupcakes simple, making the color of the cake be the beauty. Anyone can make these and look like a pro.

I got my recipe from on OLD cake recipe book I have had forever. It used to be my mothers, and I inherited it when I got married. It's a Better Homes and Gardens book from 1966. I love to flip through this thing just to enjoy the pictures in it - it's so 60's it's awesome! I made the Yellow Cake Deluxe

Ingredients:

2/3 cups butter

1 3/4 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

3 cups sifted cake flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 1/4 cup milk

green and blue food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter. Add sugar gradually, creaming till light.. Add eggs and vanilla and beat till fluffy. Sift dry ingredients together; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beating after each addition. Beat 1 minute. Add food coloring to the desired hue of green you are looking for. I put in a bit of blue food color as well, to counter the yellow of the butter. I wanted a deeper Shamrock Green.

Spread evenly between 18-24 cupcake tins, depending on how big you want your cupcakes - I did 18 of course ;o). Bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on size of cakes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool.

Frosting:

This will be a little bit more difficult for me to tell you how to make, cause I just through things in. I usually start with about 1/3 cup butter and a cup or two of powdered sugar. Beat until well mixed. Add 1/4 tsp vanilla, and enough milk to get the consistency you want: it should be a bit stiff for running through a decorating bag. At this point I will probably add more sugar and milk until I get the amount I need.

Decorating:

This is the easy part, since we are only using white frosting to really showcase the green cake. Fill a large bag with white frosting, using a large star tip.

Starting at the outside of the cupcake, tip straight down, spiral the frosting to the center making a star before lifting the bag off the cupcake - it's that easy! You can pump all these out in under 5 minutes!