Baking Whoopie

What do you call a holiday that isn’t really a holiday?  You know, the days like St. Patrick’s Day.  We call them holidays but we don’t get a day off work or anything so isn’t it just an extra fun special day or something like that? 

Whatever you call it, it’s next Saturday.  And St. Paddy’s on a Saturday is really just an excuse to buy a cute green t-shirt, head to the local Irish bar and drink Guinness (or in my case, Crown Floats) now isn’t it?

Gotta love an extra fun special day that encourages you to drink! ;)

To get in the mood I thought it would be fun to bake something green.  Which really sounds disgusting doesn’t it?  But if we can make cute red baked treats for Valentine’s Day I figured I could find a way to make green cute too.

It seemed to me that if a box of chocolate cake mix can be turned into Red Velvet cupcakes, then why couldn’t vanilla cake mix be turned into Green Velvet?  So I surfed the internet, found a basic Red Velvet Whoopie Pie recipe and got to work turning it into Green Velvet Whoopie Cakes!

Mini Green Velvet Whoopie Cakes with Bailey’s Cream Cheese Icing

adapted from Betty Crocker

yields 36 mini cupcakes

Ingredients:

cupcakes

• 1 box French Vanilla Cake Mix
• 1 box vanilla instant pudding mix (99 gram box)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 1.5 tablespoons green food colouring

icing

• 1 1/4 cups cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 2 tsp Bailey’s Irish Cream

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly spray mini muffin tins with non-stick baking spray.
2. In large bowl, beat cupcake ingredients with electric mixer on low speed until moistened; beat 1 minute longer on high speed until fluffy.  The batter will be thicker than usual cake batter.
3. Using two teaspoons fill each mini muffin cup about half full with batter.
4. Bake approximately 7-9 minutes depending on your oven.  As soon as you see a speck of brown around the edges they are done.  Cool in pan just until cool enough to handle, then transfer cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.
5. While cupcakes are baking, prepare the icing.  In large bowl, beat icing ingredients with electric mixer on low speed until combined and smooth.  Refrigerate until ready to use.
6. When cupcakes are completely cooled (I let mine sit overnight) add icing and serve.  Might I suggest a hot chocolate with Bailey’s on the side.  :)

The resulting cupcake is springy and slightly dense.  Super fun and easier to work with in mini form than regular cake batter.  The Irish Cream Icing has a nice kick and goes really well next to hot coffee, or dark stout.  Just don’t let the little kiddies think these mini-bites are for them.  These little bites of whoopie are following the adults to the pub next Saturday. 

Of course, you can indeed make actual Whoopie Pies by spooning tablespoons of the batter onto a prepared cookie sheet and baking a wee bit longer.  I found the edges turned brown though so the end product wasn’t as cute as the mini cupcakes.  Whatever floats your green boat!

Happy {early} St. Paddy’s Day everyone!

How do you get your green on?