Top of the morning/afternoon to you! I love St Patrick’s Day. Not because I’m Irish (although you would think so with a name like Kelly) but because I love green. Every day is like St Patrick’s Day in my house from our green couch to my little green bunny sitting on the side table for Easter.

I won’t be celebrating the day by sipping pints of Guinness at my local Irish pub. No, today I will be partying in a different manner because my lovely bridal party is throwing me a bridal shower. That’s right the wedding celebrations have begun!

I’m very very excited and about to go and start prettying myself up for the occasion. In amongst the excitement I did manage to whip up a little green treat. I can’t let a ‘Day’ go by without making some sort of food to honor the occasion and so peppermint cream chocolate cupcakes had to be baked.  I used the Donna Hay easy chocolate cupcake recipe for the cakes and topped them with a little bit of green coconut and was quite impressed with the chocolate, coconut and peppermint combination.

To colour the coconut, pour some into a bowl and then add a few drops of food colouring.

Very carefully mix it in until it’s well distributed. Green coconut also works very well if you need grass for cake decorating.

I thought I would be very clever and make some disposable piping bags our of zip-lock bags. To make them, snip a corner off and push your icing tip through the hole.

I thought I was clever but it turns out that thick icing + squeezing = icing explosion out the sides. I went back to the traditional non-lazy method after that.

I mixed it up a little bit and made half the cupcakes in white cases and the other half in green. I personally think the green case/white icing combo worked the best. I used a round tip for the icing.

Choc-mint coconut cupcakes - Happy St Patrick's Day

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Ingredients

• 2 cups icing sugar
• 2 tbsp butter
• a few drops of peppermint essence
• milk (a few tbsp but add it to get to the right consistency)

Instructions

1. Beat the butter with an electric mixer until it is fluffy.
2. Beat in the peppermint essence.
3. Add the icing sugar a little at a time and continue to beat.
4. If the icing gets too thick, add a little milk to get it to the right consistency.
5. To make it nice and white, just keep beating. It will get whiter and whiter.