Green Velvet Cupcakes

St. Patrick’s Day is approaching, which means my thoughts keep straying the Ireland.  I can’t believe 10 years ago at this time I was getting ready to fly to Galway.  Where has the time gone?

The following is most definitely an American take on St. Patrick’s Day.  While there is no shortage of green in Ireland, no pub or restaurant served green beer to celebrate their patron saint’s day.  Instead of green beer, I decided to celebrate with green cake – green velvet cupcakes to be exact.

I used the ingredients listed for red velvet cupcakes from bestcupcakerecipes, but mixed the batter a little differently.

Green Velvet Cupcakes

2 ½ c cake flour

1 t baking powder

1 t salt

2 T cocoa

1 t vanilla

1 c buttermilk, room temperature

½ c butter, softened

1 ½ c sugar

2 eggs

2 oz green (or red if you want to be traditional) food coloring

1 t white vinegar

1 t baking soda

Preheat oven to 350° F.  Line 24 muffin tins with paper liners.

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa in a medium bowl.  Set aside.  Measure buttermilk and add vanilla to the cup.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar about 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly.

Alternately add in flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, starting and ending with the flour mixture.  Combine each addition thoroughly.  Add food coloring.

In a small bowl (but not too small, the mixture will fizz up) stir together vinegar and baking soda.  Stir mixture into batter.

Pour batter into prepared muffin tins.  I put ¼ c batter in each tin and ended up with 22 cupcakes.

Bake about 20 minutes, until cupcakes spring back from a light touch.

Since it’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, I decorated each cupcake with a little leprechaun cupcake (mini peanut butter cup topped with frosting).  You never know when you'll run across a pot of gold and need a little bribe to distract its guardian.

Erin go bragh!