St. Patrick's Day Green Velvet Cupcakes

St Patrick's day green velvet cupcakes are rich, spongy velvet cupcakes frosted with melt in the mouth cream cheese frosting.

St Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17 to commemorate Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland and also to celebrate the heritage and culture of Ireland. Velvet cakes/cupcakes are usually red and to go with my festive theme, I made St Patrick’s day green velvet cupcakes.

St Patrick’s day was originally celebrate in Ireland. In 1700s Irish immigrants in NYC started celebrating the holiday with a parade. Since then, the holiday is celebrate all across the world by Irish diaspora and St. Patrick’s day parade has become a tradition in NYC.

The parade is on 5th avenue from 44th street to American Irish Historical society on 80th street. Here are a couple of pictures on my photo blog from previous parades.

Green is associated with this holiday but in early centuries, blue was the color. Ireland is known as Emerald Isle, Irish flag has green and the clover St Patrick used in his preaching was also green. Hence, in last 3-4 centuries green became more popular and nowadays, green is always the color synonymous St Patrick's Day. People wear green and green colored food is prepared to go with the holiday theme. Hence, I made St Patrick’s day green velvet cupcakes.

I followed the recipe to T and only adjustment I made is reduce the food color. I generally avoid artificial food colors in food and second, I shared the cupcakes with friends who have very young children. Hence, I used less than quarter of the food color called for in the recipe.

I made mini cupcakes to share with my friends and regular size cupcakes for the photos. Green velvet cupcakes are calorie rich with sour cream and butter, and frosting with cream cheese. I considered using buttercream frosting but decided against it as know how yummy cream cheese frosting is. Today’s frosting is different from the frosting I used for carrot cake, though cream cheese is the main ingredient.

Source: Garnish & Glaze
Total Time: 40 - 50 minutes
Preparation: 20 - 30 minutes
Baking Time: 19 minutes
Yields: 2 dozen (I made 24 mini cupcakes, 12 regular cupcakes)

Ingredients:
Cupcakes

• 2 cups + 2 tbsp. All Purpose Flour
• 4 ½ tbsp. Cornstarch
• 2 tbsp. Cocoa Powder
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder
• ½ tsp. Baking Soda
• ¼ tsp. Salt
• ¾ cup or 1 ½ sticks Unsalted Butter at room temperature
• 1 ½ cups Sugar
• 3 Eggs at room temperature
• 1 ¼ cup Sour Cream
• 1 tbsp. Vanilla
• 1 ½ tbsp. Green Color (I used only 1 tsp)

Frosting

• 12 oz Cream Cheese
• 6 tbsp. Butter
• 4 cups Confectioner’s Sugar
• 2-3 tablespoon Cream (I used 3 tablespoon light cream)
• ½ teaspoon Vanilla
• Green Sprinkles (I colored sugar with green color)

Preparation:
Cupcakes

• Line cupcake pans with cupcake liners.
• Preheat the oven to 350 F.
• In a small bowl, mix together dry ingredients; all purpose flour, cornstarch, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
• In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and creamy.
• Beat in one egg at a time to incorporate eggs after each addition.
• Mix in sour cream, vanilla extract and food color.
• Mix or fold in the dry ingredients (flour mixture) until just combined, scraping the sides of the bowl. I used lowest setting on my electric hand mixer.
• Spoon batter into lined cupcake tray, bake for 15 - 19 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Mini cupcakes were done in 13 minutes, regular cupcakes in 19 minutes.
• Transfer cupcakes to a cooling rack and cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

• In a bowl beat together butter and cream cheese until smooth. I used my hand held electric mixer.
• Mix in sugar, followed by cream and vanilla extract.
• Transfer frosting into a frosting bag fitted with a star tip and frost the cupcakes.
• Sprinkle sprinkles/colored sugar on top.
• I kept the cupcakes at room temperature all day and put the leftovers in the fridge. I was unsure if I can leave frosted cupcakes at room temperature for more than few hours.

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