I’ve been in a baking dry spell for several months, so I decided to make some sweet St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes. This was just as good an excuse as any, and it was something fun for my son and I to do together in the evening.
Together, we came up with a few simple designs that I’ll walk you through step by step. I hope this inspires you to dust off your piping bags and create your own fun St. Patty’s Day cupcakes with your kiddos!
I started with a dozen cupcakes. You can use any flavor you like, make them from scratch, or use a box mix like I do. This time I used Duncan Hines White Cake (my all time favorite).
After searching Google and Pinterest, I had some design ideas in mind, so I knew what general color scheme I wanted to use. I made my go-to buttercream frosting recipe, and tinted it with food coloring to make green, orange, black, yellow, tan, and I kept a lot of white aside as well.
I took a pit stop on my way home from work one day, and rummaged through the candy aisle at my local grocery store. Again, I had general design ideas in mind, so I knew roughly what I was looking for.
For starters I would suggest these basics: Oreos, Rolos, chocolate gold coins, Lucky Charms, mini marshmallows, rainbow candy ropes, gold sugar or confetti or other edible gold decorations.
Leprechaun Cupcakes
Tools you’ll need: cupcakes, a frosting bag filled with orange frosting with Wilton #18 tip, another frosting bag filled with green frosting with Wilton #5 tip, and yellow and black frosting with #3 tips.
Step 1: Cover the cupcake with tan frosting using a spatula or butter knife.
Step 2: Pipe on the beard and eyebrows with orange using a reverse shell technique. You can just wing this, because the beard is supposed to look a little messy.
Step 3: Add the hat using green frosting with a #5 tip. Then add the black and yellow accents with #3 tips.
Step 4: Finish him off with black dots for the eyes, a tan dot for the nose, and black curved line for the mouth.
Over the Rainbow Cupcakes
Tools You’ll Need: cupcakes, a frosting bag filled with white or green frosting with Wilton #1M tip, mini marshmallows, gold chocolate coins or Rolos with edible gold glitter or confetti, and sour rope candy (I used Airheads).
Step 1: Pipe a swirl of frosting onto the cupcake with white or green frosting. This is meant to cover the entire cupcake.
Step 2: Add the rope candy and insert it firmly into the frosting. Twist it to give it a little flair before inserting.
Step 3: Add chocolate gold coins, or Rolos with edible gold confetti to one end of the rainbow to create a pot of gold. Then add three mini marshmallows to the other side to represent clouds.
Lucky Charm Cupcakes
Tools You’ll Need: cupcakes, a frosting bag filled with white frosting with Wilton #1M tip, and Lucky Charms cereal.
Step 1: Cover the cupcake with white frosting using a spatula or butter knife. Then roll in a bowl of Lucky Charms to coat.
Step 2: Pipe a swirl of frosting onto the cupcake with white frosting. This should leave some of the cereal visible on the edges of the cupcake.
Step 3: Add a Lucky Charms marshmallow to the top of the cupcake to finish it off.
