Cereal for St. Patrick’s Day

This year for St. Patrick’s we used cereal in our baking. We made two different desserts for the family, green Rice Crispy treats and Lucky Charm cupcakes. For the green Rice Crispy treats we just added some green food coloring. The Lucky Charm cupcakes are a vanilla cupcake tinted green with whipped cream frosting, topped with Lucky Charms.

St. Patrick's Day

A friend that I haven't seen in awhile placed an order for some St. Patrick's Day cupcakes. She wanted to bring them to work to get everyone in the holiday spirit. We made a few different types of toppers, some shamrocks with luster dust, leprechauns, pots of gold with glitter and "kiss me I'm Irish" decorations. The cupcakes were chocolate cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream frosting.

Irish Soda Bread

We finally came up with our Irish Soda Bread recipe. It took a few tries but we are very happy with this one and can't wait to make it for the family this weekend. If you are interested in giving it a try, here is the recipe:

Ingredients

5 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 sticks of butter (room temperature)

4 cups raisins

2 1/2 cups buttermilk

1 large egg

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter iron skillet. Whisk first 5 ingredients in large bowl to blend. Add butter; using fingers rub in butter until coarse crumbs form. Stir in raisins. In separate bowl whisk buttermilk and egg to blend. Add mixture to dough; using a wooden spoon stir until well incorporated.

Transfer dough to prepared skillet; smooth top, mounding in the center. Using a knife cut a 1 inch deep X in the top center of the dough. In a small bowl mix an egg and some buttermilk, use this to brush over the top of the bread. Bake until bread is cooked through, insert a knife into the center and make sure it comes out clean. About an 1 and 15 minutes. Cool bread in skillet.

Serve and enjoy!

I can not tell a lie....

I did not bake these from scratch. I was in the market and came across a box of pink strawberry cake mix and had to make it. I grabbed the cake mix and some pink vanilla frosting. I decided to make them my own as much as I could on short notice by topping the cupcakes with pink pearl sprinkles, heart glitter sprinkles and white fondant hearts covered in glitter. They tasted great and looked adorable. Since they were such a hit I will now come up with my own strawberry cupcake recipe.