Leprechaun Cakes & Leprechaun Traps

Well we are closing in on St. Patrick’s Day so I’m going to hurry up and cram the rest of our St. Patrick’s Day activities into one post. Pardon the length, but stick with me, I promise it’s worth it. If you are looking for a couple of last minute ideas here you go!

Today was green velvet cupcake day. I have been looking forward to this for weeks!! Ever since I saw Love From The Oven’s post about her Green Velvet Cupcakes I knew I HAD to make them!! Something about the bright green and the white frosting with green and white sprinkles was just so….pretty. (there it is again. darn cute cupcakes getting the best of me).

In the end I just doctored up a cake mix as opposed to going completely from scratch. So I guess these are more or less green cupcakes as opposed to green velvet, so we’ve officially dubbed them leprechaun cakes. I’ve seen quite a few versions of these floating around this season so just pick your favorite recipe or, if you are really pressed for time, just use a straight box mix and give it a good dose of green food coloring. I used a whole bottle (yes, an entire bottle) of green food coloring as the original recipe called for. It was, without a doubt, green. Kinda pretty. I can’t say I’ve seen anything quite like it before 🙂 Very cheerful looking little cupcakes.

I used my favorite vanilla frosting recipe. I first found it over at www.kevinandamanda.com. Ever since I found this recipe I am in love, as much as one can be in love with frosting anyway. It’s hubby’s favorite too. You must try it! Here it is.

Vanilla Frosting
2 sticks of butter (room temp)
3+ cups of powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c whipping cream

Just throw everything in the bowl and mix it up until its nice and fluffy. You may want to tweak the amount of powdered sugar or cream depending on the consistency. I’m sometimes add a little more of both. It should be kind of a cross between whip cream and frosting. I can’t stress how good this frosting is! Even if you don’t ever plan on making green cupcakes, find something to frost with this frosting!

In case you are wondering….Yes, I did try the cupcakes, and yes, they do turn your tongue green.

There you have it, one project down…one more to go. Now for Leprechaun traps!

My oldest has been leprechaun crazy since about Tuesday. He’s convinced they are staking the place out so he’s already got his traps out.

The real star of our leprechaun traps this year is the gold. Seeing as Mom, yes guilty as charged, ate all the left over rolos from our pots of gold project I had to find something in the house we could use as gold bait. Well, we had leftover gold paint from the canvases we did last week so I decided to make a project out of it. I sent him out to look for rocks that we could paint to look like gold nuggets. Perfect! They came out fantastic (and as a bonus it occupied him for quite awhile painting all those rocks).

See 🙂