St. Patrick's Day Mint Chocolate Cupcakes ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧ ♧

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

Ireland, and Dublin in particular is one of my favourite places in the world.  My Grandparents lived there since my Dad was at university and so I have spent all of my childhood visiting, and now whenever I go back to England to visit I make sure I ALWAYS get to Dublin to go back, to see my Granny, to wander around the city and enjoy it!  I've even been lucky enough to spend time there during St. Patrick's weekend, the parade there was incredible :-)

Since moving to Canada, I have discovered that North America LOVES St. Patrick's Day - perhaps more than England does?!  You all go nuts for it!  I have no problem with that, I love it too.  What a fun celebration for the patron saint of Ireland.

Last week I got crafty and made my Lucky Pocket Sneakers and Shamrock bunting, see that post here but this weekend I have been baking!

I'm been on a cupcake roll recently... I have some I still need to post up from last week but for this weekend I went on an Irish/ St. Patrick's Day theme and made some chocolate mini cupcakes with a mint buttercream frosting.  I decorated them with some green decorations, and my favourite part - the fondant shamrocks :-)

Michael's served me well with a new set of mini cupcake cases, the green spotty ones were perfect for this project!

I used a basic cupcake recipe (see below) and substituted some cocoa powder for some flour for the chocolatey taste!  For my mini cupcake tray (makes 24) I used my small cookie scoop, not quite filled, as I didn't want them to be too overflowing when they had risen. 

I was trying to think of adaptations of a mint chocolate chip idea and thought that a chocolate cupcake, with buttercream frosting made to be a mint flavour would do the trick :-)

I used 3 different tips to decorate, a small round one (Wilton # 12) to make a base for the fondant shamrocks, an large inverted star (Wilton # 2D) to create swirls that the green sugar would be sprinkled onto, and a star tip (Wilton # 21) to create a swirl that looked good enough (well on some it looked okay enough!) to leave blank.

My general idea was to create variations on a theme and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out.

That is to say, I was not too happy at the start of my piping, but once the toppings and decorations were on I was pleased with how they looked!

I am MOST happy with the shamrocks.  Originally I was thinking I would have to cut out the shamrocks free hand out of the green fondant, then sometime this week I had a brain wave.  Earlier this month I picked up a lot of cheap Wilton baking accessories: a star hand punch, various stamps for decorating cakes, a crimper for fondant and also a heart hand punch!  This would be PERFECT!  All I needed was the green fondant rolled out, then I could punch out my little hearts and use three to make the shamrock!  I crimped the rest of the fondant to and ripped apart the strips it made, cut them short and used those for sturdy stems!  And there I had the perfect size shamrocks for these mini cupcakes.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful March Break if you were off school, and a fun filled St. Patrick's Day!  I know the crafts and baking I have seen on blogs and link parties this week have been SO great - can't wait to see more of your creations next week :-)

Chocolate Mini Cupcakes Recipe (makes 48 mini cupcakes plus 3 regular sized cupcakes, just for tasting!)

230g unsalted butter, softened

230g caster sugar (I used superfine granulated)

4 eggs

230g self-raising flour BUT sub out 4 tablespoons floor, and add 4 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1.  Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C

2.  Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy

2.  Add eggs one at a time and vanilla extract

3.  Sift in flour and cocoa powder.  Fold in until just combined.

4.  Scoop into cupcake cases (I did this in two batches as I only have 1 mini cupcake pan) and   bake for 12 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean/the sponge springs back to your touch.

5.  Leave to cool before decorating.

Mint Buttercream Frosting Recipe (makes enough to cover all of the cupcakes with the style of piping I used)

300g butter

450g icing sugar

2 tbsp milk

Peppermint extract, to taste.  I think in the end I used around 3/4 teaspoons, but do check as you go!

1.  Soften butter in mixer

2.  Add icing sugar

3.  Add milk and peppermint extract to taste.

Pipe, decorate, and then of course ENJOY!  ♧

♧ A Crafty St. Patrick's Day ♧

Happy March Break and pre-St. Patrick's Day everyone!!

I got a little crafty this week preparing for the new season of home decor and had a lot of fun making everything.

May I present, the second in my 'Pocket Sneaker' series - Lucky Pocket Sneakers (...I just made that name up, what do you all think!?)  Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, these shamrocks can be slipped somewhere special to wish somebody a little extra luck.  Maybe your little one has a test at school - send a little luck their way with a Lucky Pocket Sneaker in their lunchbox!! Or perhaps somebody is nervous to present a speech, or give a talk - how good would it feel if they found a little lucky charm in their pocket, or briefcase :-)

Similar to my Valentine's Day Heart Pocket Sneakers, they are felt, machine sewn and stuffed with polyester fill.  For the hearts I used a cookie cutter to make the shape, this time I used a foam shamrock I had bought for my other St. Patrick's Day project (...see below) and made it a little larger, just using the shamrock as a template and marking around it on the felt.  I used pinking shears to cut them out (just 6 this time as there was no game of hide and seek to play... not yet anyway!), sewed them together, stuffed and sewed shut.  And there you go, all done with lots of time for some St. Patrick's Day baking later this week.

My second crafty project for this season (and really, where would all of us crafty lovers be without holidays and seasons to make for?!) was some bunting to hang.  My 'Happy Birthday' banner I had made last year for Jonathan (see his 2012 birthday post here) had finally come down, only a month later so it was time to replace it!

I am super excited for how this turned out, and also how inexpensive it was to make!  A recent Walmart trip meant an excuse to pick up some green paint chips, pretending that our next wall would be coloured Emerald Green hehe... Last year I had seen this idea on Pinterest (where else of course!) and tried it for Spring bunting at Easter time (check it out here) so used the same scalloped punch to cut out all different shades.  A single hole punch cut out two holes at the top of each circle ready for the string.

Bunting displayed with original watercolours - painted by my
Granny who lives in Dublin, Ireland... how appropriate :-P

I decided against ribbon this time and thought I would try something different and got some Mason's twine, obviously because it was green and found some great foam shamrocks, both from the local Dollarama.  So, a total of $2.50 with countless metres of twine leftover - this was a very very cheap bunting project!!

For 10 feet of space I wanted to decorate, I used about 11 feet of twine, 28 circles of paint chip colours (so only around 15 paint chips, depending on the size of your punch of course) and 14 foam shamrocks.

Have a fantastic week getting crafty for St. Patrick's Day, especially if it's a week off work/school for you too.  I'm excited to get going on some crafty projects I've been saving up... oh and some tidying/sorting too... Less exciting.

Anyhow, enjoy!!  I'm looking forward to seeing all of your March projects too - leave me a comment and send me a link to your blog :-)