St Patrick’s Day cupcake recipe you can make with the kids

Easy to follow St Patrick’s day cupcake recipe you can make with your kids!

St Patrick’s day is a big celebration in Ireland and a day kids and adults await fondly. Schools are closed, the parade is on and cheer is in the air, green outfits turning the Emerald Isle even greener!

A fun way to mark the day, both in Ireland and abroad, is to take inspiration from it and do some St Patrick’s Day-inspired baking.

In our house in Dublin, we love cupcakes, and since this year the parade is off (thanks, coronavirus, can you go away already?), today we have made Paddy’s Day-inspired ones!

This is our tried and tested recipe. I hope you enjoy it. Happy Paddy’s Day from Dublin!

St Patrick’s Day Cupcakes: ingredients

We made our St Patrick’s day cupcakes with frosting but you can decorate them as you please, so I am going to divide the ingredients between dough and topping.

St Patrick’s day cupcakes ingredient for the cake base

The base for the cupcakes comes from an old family recipe for marble cake and works like a charm!

• 150 gr butter (unsalted)
• 200 gr caster sugar
• 200 gr white flour
• 15 gr yeast (much better than baking powder!)
• 3 eggs
• Milk – as much as needed to make the dough dropping heavily from the spoon (less than half a glass)

Ingredients for Green St Patrick’s day frosting

I took this simple frosting recipe for icing from BBC Good food here.

• 140g butter
• 280g icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• ¼ tsp vanilla extract
• few drops food coloring (we used Goodall’s Green)

Top tip: before you start baking, gather all the ingredients on your kitchen counter so they are all at room temperature. This will make working the butter easier and the milk, if not fridge cold, will also mix much better!

What equipment you need to make Paddy’s Day Fairybuns: necessary pots and pans

• Food scale
• Large bowl
• Wooden spoon
• Spatula
• A second bowl large enough to whip the eggwhite in
• Cupcake tin/silicon holders
• A whisk (ideally electric) for the egg yolks
• A toothpick to check if they are ready (you can also use the back of a teaspoon but a toothpick is less intrusive and won’t pierce the cake as much)

How to make the fairy buns: basic cupcake recipe

Put the butter into a large bowl, then use a wooden spoon to make into small chunks and slowly into a cream.

If you find this too hard, you can soften it in the microwave but don’t overdo it, you want it to become a cream, not to melt.

Add the sugar and mix well so that they amalgamate fully. I like doing this step with a spatula as is makes it easy to clean the inside of the bowl and waste nothing.

Leave this mixture aside, take the bowl you will use for the egg whites and crack to eggs, separating yolks and white.

Add the yolks to the butter and sugar mix and stir well.

Slowly, add the flour and the yeast to the bowl and mix well so that is all amalgamates fully. The dough at this point will be pretty dry so you may want to add starting the milk, but don’t go overboard!

Need to know: You want to add as much milk as you need so that if you lift the dough with a spoon and then let it drop back into the bowl, it does so heavily. You do not want a runny, watery dough! If in doubt, put a little less rather than a little more as the egg white will make it a little more watery anyway once added. Usually you only really need a few spoonfuls of milk, no more.

Set aside this dough and turn your attention to your egg white. If you have an electric whisk use it to whip the whites until stiff or get as close as you can to that with a manual whisk.

It is very tiring if you do it by hand, but this is not a make-or-break step for the recipe: you need them pretty stiff, but it won’t be as disastrous, and with meringues if you cut yourself a little slack!

Add the whites to the main mix and fold them in well, trying to keep them fluffy.

Our gently into your cupcake holders and put in the over at 180 degrees / 200 degrees (ventilated / static) for about 20 minutes.

Use a toothpick to check if the inside is cooked. They are ready when the toothpick comes out clean.

Once ready, get them out of the oven and let them cool slightly before adding the frosting (otherwise, it will melt!)

Easy green frosting recipe for your St Patrick’s Day cupcakes

No St Patrick’s Day cupcake would deserve that name if it didn’t have green frosting, right? This is how you make it.

Like for the cupcake, start with the butter. Put into a bowl and slowly work it into a cream with the aid of a whisk.

Always whisking, add the icing sugar, the vanilla extract, and the milk, and the food coloring, until the form a soft cream. Your icing is ready!

Top tip: for the frosting to come out smooth, you need your icing sugar to have no lumps. I usually get my daughter to help with this passing it thought an icing sugar stirrer but if you don’t have one, you can also just put into a bowl and squash the lumps with a spoon. Don’t skip this step of you will have little balls of sugar in the frosting and while they may sound nice, they really ruin our final creation!

I hope you enjoyed this St Patrick’s day cupcake recipe and it has given you an idea for a fun and easy baking craft to make with your kids. Happy St Patrick’s Day!