Food

St Patrick’s Day Cupcakes

With St Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I’ve been scouring the internet for inspiration to get my creative juices flowing for “green” ideas. Last year I posted a green machine yummy smoothie and followed it up with a cute green pepper/apple shamrock stamp craft which is adorable for little hands. So what’s next? A green cupcake of course, and which requires just 3 ingredients! You know I love quick and easy, and this fit the bill. Plus, having spinach in there as a natural food coloring rocks. Don’t worry, you won’t even notice the spinach!

What you’ll need:

1	Boxed organic vanilla cake mix 15.25oz
1 cup	unsweetened applesauce
3 cups	organic baby spinach

Equipment:

Food processor

Kitchen scale

Hand mixer or mixer

Large mixing bowl

Muffin pan

Cupcake wrappers and toppers

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add your St. Paddy’s cupcake wrappers to your muffin tin. In a food processor, process your spinach and applesauce into a smooth puree. I let mine process for about 3 minutes. My organic cake mix contained 18.2 oz, the recipe calls for 15.25 so I threw it on the scale to measure it out. In a large bowl, combine the dry cake mix with the applesauce/spinach puree. With an electric hand mixer or mixer combine for about 2 minutes. With an ice cream scoop or spoon portion out the batter into the prepared muffin tin wrappers. Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into centers comes out clean. Allow to cool. Add your St Paddy’s toppers. As a side note I should had doubled up my wrappers. The outside with the decorative shamrock and the inside with a foil cupcake wrapper or sprayed them slightly with Pam. My muffin stuck a bit to the paper wrapper FYI. But other than that…. a big hit!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!