Rainbow Cupcakes

I started thinking about what cupcakes I wanted to bake for St. Patrick's Day. My freezer contained lots of different colors of icing from my projects over the past few months. So I thought it would be great to frost vanilla cupcakes with all of these wonderful, vibrant colors. Many people have said that buttercream icing will last in the freezer for months and I was not quite sure how long that would be but I got my answer on Saturday. I began icing my cupcakes and you know if you have done this before that icing always lands on the outside of your hand. Well I did not resist the urge to lick it off. And I'm glad that I did because the orange icing tasted like the inside of a freezer! I asked Mom to taste some of the other icing we were about to use and she agreed that it tasted strange. Luckily the green icing that was already on two of the cupcakes tasted normal. I scraped off the orange and was like now what????

During the Christmas holiday I learned a new trick on the Our Best Bites blog. They baked peppermint cupcakes and made a red swirl in the icing by painting red stripes with food coloring inside the pastry bag. I completely forgot about this technique until I saw it again on the Tracey's Culinary Adventures blog. Tracey made rainbow icing by painting all the colors of the rainbow inside a pastry bag. I planned to try this out with some white icing I made earlier in the week. Needless to say this solved my icing dilemma. Of course the peanut gallery (aka Dad) piped up and said "Just go to Ingles and buy some in a can. That works for me." Ugh Dad that does not work for me! Anyway I was not sure how this was going to turn out because it was a little challenging to paint the food coloring inside the bag. It didn't seem like enough. But I was pleased with the end result. My parents said they liked my rainbow icing better than Tracey's. Mom said "it looks like a rainbow inside puffs of clouds." Maybe Mom and Dad are biased. Sorry Tracey, I like your icing and thanks for the idea.

I baked vanilla cupcakes from my go to recipe. A friend suggested that I chop up Andes mints and add it to the batter. This was an awesome suggestion because I could not find creme de mint Hershey's kisses when I was at Publix. Well it was great until I went to eat one and all the chocolate was at the bottom. I guess chopped up Andes mints are not the same as chocolate chips. It is interesting how the whole cupcake tastes minty even though the chocolate is at the bottom. We live and learn. Next time I will have to research another method for adding mints.

An Old Irish Blessing

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.