Mean Green Fightin’ Machine…

Posted by bakingtruehappiness on March 17, 2011 · 2 Comments 

Something strange happened when The Husband and I moved to Texas. We pretty much forgot about all major drinking holidays. GASP! And seeing as today is the king of all drinking holidays, St. Patrick’s Day, and we didn’t remember about it until about Tuesday, we didn’t have a drop to drink. Well, and The Husband is working swing shift right now so he’s working most of the drinking hours.

If we were back in Oregon we would surely be at the Bar-Muda Triangle in Eugene. It’s an amazing center of drunken debauchery disguised as an intersection with 7 different bars. All are different, but one of my favorites is a bar with 80’s night on Thursdays. So imagine my distress when I realized that St. Patrick’s Day was on a Thursday this year, and I was so far, from so much magic. I knew that the only way to fill this hole in my heart, was going to be with a cupcake. Not just any cupcake, a green cupcake.

I did some perusing and found something quite wonderful, Green Velvet Cupcakes at Bakerella’s site (  http://www.bakerella.com/red-velvet-revisited/ ). In full disclosure, I’ve never been to her site before, but I have become addicted after just one visit. I figured that these would be a nice way to celebrate even though there was no alcohol involved.

Now, when I cook, I try to keep things as natural as possible. I try to get my colors from the Earth. I try to keep things I can’t find in nature out of the picture. Well, I had to throw that kind of thinking out the window real fast. This recipe calls for a bottle, yes you read that right, a WHOLE BOTTLE of green food coloring. If these didn’t turn out to be the most beautiful cool of green I would have complained, but I guess a whole bottle of green food coloring is the magical amount.

I needed to use a whole cup of oil. Well, normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but I guess I have been baking a lot because I had to use the last of my vegetable oil, canola oil, walnut oil, and a bit of olive oil to even get a full cup. Nobody can say these cakes didn’t have any bit of diversity.

Like most other baking, wet with wet and dry with dry.

Then mix the two together.

Now since I feel so utterly close to all of you, I should let you know I have a problem. I might even need help. I overfill my cupcake wrappers. SHOCK! And it’s not even on accident any more, I enjoy the giant cookie like tops it creates; that is, until I have to get the cakes out of the pans. But in that moment, when I’m filling those tins past three quarters full, well, it’s something like a high.

Bakerella didn’t mention how long she baked her cupcakes, I did mine for about 3o minutes.

With her Green Velvet Cakes, she made a “cooked frosting”. I had never made anything like this before, and I thought it sounded so interesting. You basicly cook some milk and flour until it gets think. It’s a bit like making a rue.

Then you cream it with some sugar, butter, and vanilla. I do have to say that I think the term “frosting” is a bit generous for this. It’s more of an icing. At least mine was. It wasn’t very think, and it didn’t set up as well as hers seemed to.

I have to say, alone, the cakes and the icing weren’t much of anything to brag about (part of that might be that the green kind of freaked me out). But when you take a bite with both cake and icing something wonderful happens. It’s not quite describable. Imagine two people who are ok alone, but together are amazing.

I simply couldn’t get over the green of these cakes. It was worth all the ingredients in the food coloring that I can’t pronounce.

These are a wonderful little bit of heaven. Like green beer, I’m sure these wont come around that often, (although can you say perfect for Duck Football Season) but when they do you know you’re in for a good time. And even though I didn’t get drunk this St. Patrick’s Day, these cakes filled the void pretty well.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! I hope you ate something green, wore something green, and drank something green!

Filed under Cupcakes