St. Patty's Day Cupcakes

Apparently the luck of the Irish was not on my side since I made these after St. Patty's Day. Hopefully if you decide to make them it will go much smoother.

What makes these cupcakes stand out is their color. Their flavor couldn't be any more basic - vanilla. I started with a basic white cake and added about 80 drops of green food coloring. I normally would use the gel based color, but for some reason that is beyond me I chose to use the liquid. Mistake #1. I didn't have the time or the patience to make them as dark as I would have liked. I was going for a deep, dark green, like the red is in a red velvet cupcake. I ended up with cupcakes the color of Play-doh.

I decided to use the same buttercream recipe that I used for the Valentine's cupcakes. Mistake #2. I will now stick to my traditional vanilla buttercream, my Nana's recipe. It didn't matter how much liquid I added or how long I beat it, it would not get nice and fluffy. Last time I didn't have any problems at all. I finally just put it in my decorating bag. I usually use the 1M decorating tip to make the swirl on top of the cupcakes. I decided to use a multi-opening tip (#233) to give the icing a grass-like appearance. The icing was so stiff and thick that I couldn't even squeeze it through the tip. I finally got a tiny bit out and my hands were so sore that I just gave up and switched back to the usual tip. So much for a different look! Even this took a long time and looked horrible. Out of 10 jumbo cupcakes I ended up with 5 "pretty" (a.k.a. not horrible) cupcakes. At least I went the easy route and used the gel coloring for the icing. After I finally got some icing sloppily put on the top of them I sprinkled them with green decorating sugar.

The cupcakes tasted good - not too sweet and a good vanilla flavor. My husband (and other family members) always tell me, "It doesn't have to look good, just taste good." I am not a member of that school of thought - at least not if I have made it. I was very upset with the way these turned out. Oh well, there is always next time!