Pot of Gold Cupcakes
Make these pot of gold cupcakes for your whole crew this St. Patrick’s Day! They’ll love the rich, dark chocolate cake with the rainbow striped frosting, and the gold coin on top is such a fun touch!
It’s the start of a brand new week!
And I could not be happier about it because it’s MARCH!
All throughout the dreary, blustery, bitterly cold months, I just keep my eyes on the prize that is March. March may come in like a lion, but it goes out like a lamb. Even though on Sunday, the first of March, we were being pelted with freezing rain and the slush was 3 inches deep, all I could think about was that in a few short weeks it will be Spring! Hooray!
Another reason I love March is because St. Patrick’s day falls during this month. I have a lot of Irish in me, and in my younger days I used to love to spend the whole holiday in the pub, listening to the traditional folk music and sipping on pints of Guinness.
Now that I am a mom I can’t really get away with doing stuff like that any more, but I do still love to celebrate the holiday with as many fun, Irish-inspired recipes as I can. Look out for a few really great ideas that utilize authentic Irish ingredients over the next few weeks.
But for today’s post, I’m going with something that’s probably more fun than it is authentic.
This is just a cute idea that the little ones are sure to love. If they’re anything like my kids, that is! My kids go ga-ga for anything rainbow. Or chocolate!
The cupcake base is a deep, dark, chocolate that is so moist and soft, yet sturdy enough to stand up to a generous swirl of frosting. I love this recipe because it all happens in one bowl, easy-peasy, and you don’t even have to mess around with melting chocolate. I used a combination of this “black” cocoa and just regular, unsweetened cocoa powder. It gives a nice, deep color while still providing a bold, chocolate flavor that comes through like whoa. Also I love how it kinda looks like a black cauldron, in a way.
You can use any kind of frosting you like, but I’m pretty partial to this Swiss buttercream. It’s so silky and light.
But the real star of the show is the rainbow swirl. I thought you guys might be interested to know how to pipe striped frosting! It’s actually really simple, you just use a thin, clean artist brush to swipe stripes of gel paste food coloring down the inside of your pastry bag. Then fill it with buttercream and squeeze it out, just like you normally would.
Top them off with a gold (chocolate) coin and you’ve found your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Hope you enjoy!
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Pot of Gold Cupcakes
Ingredients
- Gel paste food coloring in Red,, Lemon Yellow, Kelley Green, Royal Blue, Violet, and Rose Pink
- 1 batch Swiss Meringue Buttercream
- 1 batch Simply Perfect Chocolate Cupcakes
- 30 chocolate coins
Instructions
- Using a thin (clean) artist brush, paint stripes of food coloring along the inside of a large pastry bag fitted with a 1M tip.
- Fill the bag with Swiss buttercream and pipe the frosting on the cooled cupcakes.
- Garnish each cupcake with a gold coin.
So much for for St. Patrick’s Day!
I tried these tonight. They turned out ok but not as beautiful as yours! Not sure what I did? Maybe need some more practice. The 1st couple had way too much food coloring! I would post a pic of mine but don’t think it will let me.
I’m sorry they didn’t come out well, Ashley! Practice definitely makes perfect and you want to be careful to just use a small amount of gel color. It’s very concentrated!
What size of chocolate coin did you use? Where did you buy your chocolate coins? The link to your chocolate coin doesn’t seem to work.
They’re just standard size Jazzmin, you can kind of gauge by looking at the pics and comparing with the size of the cupcake. Maybe an inch or so in diameter? I just typed chocolate coins into Amazon’s search window; here’s what I came up with: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=chocolate+coins.
Hi, can we use any type of frosting, or is the Swiss merengue the best for piping with the rainbow effect?
Hey Emily! This technique works for any kind of frosting at all. You could even use the canned stuff. Swiss meringue is just my favorite 🙂
I would love to use one of your photos and a link back to this page on my rainbow cupcake round up! Would that be ok?
Absolutely, thank you Terri! I appreciate the link back for the recipe and thanks for asking 🙂