For St. Patrick's Day this year, I made many treats for some of friends and family. First treat I made was a Shamrock sugar cookie. I found the cookie cutter on Amazon, made some sugar cookie dough and got to work. After letting the cookies cool completely, I made an icing using powdered sugar, light corn syrup, vanilla extract, and water. I like using this versus a royal icing, because it dries well but not too hard. I made the base icing white, then made multiple shades of green and drizzled them over the white base. I used a tooth pick to swirl the green shades together, and then dipped the cookies upside down into the icing bowl. I let them dry over night, and then used gold pearl dust and splattered the cookies with flecks of gold!
The Next treat I made for St. Patrick's day was a thin mint chocolate cupcake. I love thin mints, and only recently found out that I don't have to wait for girl scout cookie season to have them! they are in the grocery store all year round! Anyway, I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes, and made a buttercream frosting with mint extract and crushed thin mint cookies mixed in. I dipped each cupcake in a chocolate ganache first, then swirled mint cookie butter cream on top and topped with a thin mint on top!
Next treat of the weekend was a Shamrock cake. I have been seeing on a lot of blogs that a naked two layer cake has been popular lately. I made two sheet cakes using a vanilla cake recipe, once they were cool, I cut the shamrock shape out of each. I traced one onto a large piece of paper, cut that out and used a sharp knife to trace it. I left the two layers in the fridge over night, so they would be easier to move around and pick up the next day without breaking. I put the first layer down, and used a vanilla buttercream frosting tinted different shades of green and piped different shapes of different sizes all over the top of the cake. I then stacked the second layer on top, and repeated the process. I like that you could see the shapes and colors of the frosting on the middle layer on the sides of the cake. I topped the cake with gold sprinkles.
Last but not least I attempted to make home made soda bread this year! I usually do not like the store brought ones, so I wasn't sure if I just didn't like soda bread or just ones from the stores. So I found a recipe on pinterest and went for it. There are lots of discussions about what a traditional soda bread does and does not have in it. So therefore I will not say this is a traditional Irish soda bread, it is one version with raisins. It was surprisingly easy to throw together, it made two loaves, and I really ended up loving it. I think my friends and family did too.
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