Mint cupcakes - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope everyone has fantastic plans for this weekend to celebrate St. Patrick's Day! Whether you're Irish or not, I hope you settle down to eat or drink something of a artificial bright green colour.

This year, I went with a classic vanilla cupcake with green coloured mint flavoured frosting.

Once again, I used my trusty vanilla cupcake recipe (see vanilla cupcakes). Buttercream is a standard recipe that really doesn't change no matter who you talk to.

With this buttercream, I wanted to make it green in the spirit of St. Patrick, so I used Wilton's icing colour in Kelly Green. Be prepared to use a lot of this. To make the standard 1 cup butter equivalent of buttercream, I went through nearly a whole teaspoon of colour to get the vibrant green colour I wanted.

After several toothpicks dripping with green colour, I was finally satisfied with the colour / sick of adding more colour / losing feeling in my beating arm.

As usual, I used my Wilton 1M tip to get my buttercream swirls. I tried to do some shamrock fondant cut outs (as you can see in the first photo, with my green fondant and fondant mat out), but I didn't have the best of luck with my cutters to get a shamrock shape I was happy with. I eventually left it out, so I'll save the fondant for when I need to cover a green cake.

Vanilla cupcakes

3 cup all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
2 cup sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
1 cup milk (I used unsweetened almond milk)
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together.
2. Beat the butter until creamy. Add sugar and cream until light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes.
3. Beat in one egg at a time, mixing thoroughly in between each.
4. On low, mix in the dry mixture and milk, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.
5. Beat in vanilla.
6. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full of batter. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes and cool on wire racks.

Green mint buttercream

1 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp peppermint extract
4 cup icing sugar, sifted
1-2 tsp milk, if needed (I used unsweetened almond milk) 

1. Beat butter until creamy. Slowly (1/2 cup at a time) add in icing sugar, mixing thoroughly and scraping the bowl as you go.
2. Add vanilla and peppermint extract.
3. If needed, thin out buttercream with milk, 1/2 tsp at a time until desired consistency is reached.
4. Pipe onto cupcakes with a Wilton 1M tip fitted in a pastry bag.