Showing posts with label St. Patrick's Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. Patrick's Day. Show all posts

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Top of the Cupcake to you!

Happy St. Patty's Week! Who is excited to bake up a wee pot of cupcake gold for friends, family, and co-workers?? While I definitely feel your angst in creatively coming up with ideas to bake for a holiday largely centered around clovers, leprechauns, and (for those of age...) drinking, I'm here to share with you a few cool ideas I had for 2012!

I got particularly excited after I came across liquor-infused icing ideas, and it's so easy to do! When making the icing, instead of adding water, milk, or vanilla, use Bailey's or whiskey. YUM. Nothing says Irish like integrating drinking into cupcake eating.

Moreover, I know that green cake is often a popular idea, but how about jumping on the red velvet band-wagon and calling it Green Velvet Cupcakes. You can even put some creamy cheese frosting on top to enhance the red-velvet-y flavor. Adorable and classy, right?!

On the more fun, mythical side of the spectrum, you can make any kind of festive cupcake and top it with Lucky Charms. This will undoubtedly be a hit with the kids. Sugar and more sugar?? I'm on board!

Another way to play up the whimsical is to utilize those colored marshmallows (that are on the shelves thanks to Easter just around the corner) to make tiny green top hats (like the below). Or you could always take a page out of my Mad Hatter Tea Party post and turn the cupcake upside down to make it one giant green hat!



Whatever you choose, just remember to taste test - because it's the scientific thing to do!!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The Last Minute Cute Cupcake: Food Coloring

In continuation of spontaneous cupcakespiration, today we will explore the fun-filled options of...

Food Coloring


If you have food coloring, you can bake a spontaneous batch of cupcakes that can apply to any occasion! I'm not just talking about through colorful icing swirls.

The awe-factor is easy to achieve, just by adding food coloring to the cake part of the cupcake. You can dye it all one color - like green for St. Patrick's Day (or Christmas!), blue for Hanukkah, or tie-dye for birthdays! Here I made these "Hippie" cupcakes for 4th of July last year.

The trick is to remember that regular eggs will give any light-colored cake a yellow hue - so, for true colors, use an egg white recipe. Also, through trial and error, I realize that the dye adds an extra component to the dry mix that thus needs extra moisture. Just a smidgen bit of extra oil!

Also, it helps if you swirl the various batter colors together. Otherwise, the three colors won't combine to create new colors on their own!