The Watson Kitchen: St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes

Hi Y'all!

I know I promised this recipe yesterday.. But here I am with it today. Yesterday was a bit hectic. I had to work in the morning, and then we had a party when I got off work..

I was a bit tired after it all and did not feel like writing up this post. We had a blast though. The hubs is always fun when he gets a few drinks in him.. He is normally very quite and anti-social, but give him a drink or two and he'll chat up everyone in the room! I'm sure he will love me sharing this info with y'all.. lol

I loved making these cupcakes. They are super cute! I know the rainbow/tie-dye cupcakes have been very popular lately, so of course I had to incorporate them into my St. Patrick's Day cupcakes. I of course put my own spin on the rainbow cupcakes and made them a true tie-dye! Well, the second batch anyways, once I figured out how to do it just right.

Rainbow Cupcakes:

1 package white cake mix

red, blue, green, yellow, and orange icing gel (food coloring)

4-5 packs of Airheads extreme rainbow berry

5 packs of Rolo candies

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Line your cupcake tins with 24 cupcake liners. Mix cake mix according to the package. Divide evenly among 5 bowls. Add the food coloring, I used Wilton's icing gel, to each bowl till you reach your desired color. With the gels, you don't really need a whole lot.

With my first batch, I left out the blue and just used red, green, yellow, and orange.

The first batch I layered the colors, a teaspoon of red, teaspoon of green, yellow, and orange. I did not follow a set pattern on my colors.. I wanted them to all be different..

They came out looking like this:

On the second batch I added blue and layered the colors a bit differently. If you want a true tie-dye look, I suggest doing them this way..

Start by placing about 1/2 a teaspoon of red on the bottom to one side of your cupcake liner. Followed by 1/2 a teaspoon of yellow. Now take a toothpick and swirl the colors together, but do not mix completely. You still want to have 2 different colors, just swirled together. Place 1/2 a teaspoon of blue, green and orange on top of the red/yellow swirl. And swirl together. So at this point you now have 2 layers of swirled colors. Next place 1/2 a teaspoon of all the colors, side by side. Your not layering them, they should be as close to side by side as you can get. And then swirl them all together. Again, I did each one differently so I could have random colors instead of them all being the same.

They should look something like this:

When the red and blue swirl together, they create purple. So you get an added color to your cupcakes!

Bake for 15-18 minutes. They are so pretty when they come out!

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 package cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

4-6 cups powdered sugar

green and yellow food coloring

Whip cream cheese and butter together, until combined and smooth. Add vanilla, mix well. Added powdered sugar 1 cup at a time until you reach your desired consitency. Before adding in the green food coloring, take out about a cup of frosting and set aside. Added in green food coloring. I usually whip my cream cheese frosting until it is very light and fluffy. I would not suggest doing that for these cupcakes. It made the decorations harder to stand up on the cupcakes ( at least thats what I am assuming..). With the frosting you set aside, add in some yellow food coloring.

I used a wilton 233 tip, to make the green frosting look like grass.. I couldn't get it just right, so I moved on to using an Ateco 807.

Cut the Airheads in to small peices. You should get about 2 out of each strip. You can try cutting them in half, but I found that was just a little to big to set up in my frosting.

Place one Rolo on each cupcake near the rainbow. Using the yellow frosting, pipe on a little dab onto each Rolo. Viola! you now have super cute cupcakes!

Here is a look of the insides of the swirled ones: