glittery shamrock cookies for st. patrick's day

Last year for my daughter's St. Patrick's Day party at school, I signed up to make cookies (of course). And since my cousin Yvonne had given me this adorable jar of green shimmer sprinkles, I just had to use them!

I started with my favorite sugar cookie dough that I always use (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), rolled it out until about 1/8" thick, and used a shamrock cookie cutter (which I believe is from a Crate & Barrel cookie cutter set that my friend Diana gave me years ago).

Then before baking the cookies, I brushed them lightly with egg whites, and added my sparkly green sprinkles. 

I had used the cookie cutter to help me out so I wouldn't get sprinkles everywhere, but in hindsight I think I shouldn't have done that because it left me with bare edges that had no sprinkles!

Then I baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes until the edges of the cookies were golden.

I thought they came out pretty cute, and using the sprinkles was much easier than outlining and flooding each cookie with royal icing. But I still felt the edges were too bare, so I ended up piping green royal icing around the edges, just to give it a more finished look.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

matcha green tea ruffle cake

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, this green cake would be perfect! (Especially since it kind of resembles a head of cabbage!) But actually, I didn't make this for St. Patrick's Day, I made it for my coworker Kim, who loves anything green tea! For the past few years I've been baking her green tea birthday cakes. Last year's was this green tea rose cake, and she liked it so much that I thought I'd make it for her again this year! But this time instead of piped roses, I decided to do a ruffle cake piped to resemble one large flower!

The green tea cake is a chiffon-style batter, with whipped egg whites to lighten it, and plenty of green tea powder to give a strong green tea flavor.

I baked my batter in two 8-inch cake pans, and once cooled I made a large batch of freshly whipped cream, which I then flavored with a paste made of green tea powder mixed with hot water.

Then I filled my cake layers, and covered the tops and sides of my cake with the whipped cream.

Then came the fun part - piping the ruffles! I used a Wilton #104 petal tip and started my ruffles in the center of the cake, using my turning cake stand to turn the cake while I piped.

Then I just kept piping ...

... and piping, until I had covered the top of the cake with petals. 

At this point, I thought it looked quite pretty, and considered stopping and leaving it as is. I really liked the look of the ruffles on top of the cake with the straight sides.

But then I decided that I needed to keep going with my original plan to pipe ruffles all over the entired cake!

I'm so glad that I did, because the finished the cake came out so pretty! So girly, frilly and ruffly!





Hope you enjoyed the cake, Kim! Happy Birthday!

chocolate mint layer cake for st. patrick's day

It's been almost a year since I made this St. Patrick's Day cake, and I'm only now getting around to blogging about it! Oh well, at least it's just in time for this year's St. Patrick's Day!

I didn't have much time to make the cake, as I had just given birth to my third baby a month earlier (and I was still nursing every 2 hours so I had to work in small half-hour chunks of time throughout the day), so I chose my favorite chocolate cake recipe which can be made in one bowl. I baked it up in two 8-inch pans, and while they were cooling I whipped up a quick batch of peppermint whipped cream (with a few drops of coloring to tint it green).

Then I sliced my cake layers in half horizontally (giving me four cake layers), and filled and frosted the layers with the peppermint whipped cream.

Decorating it had to be simple as I only had small spurts of time, so I piped a simple shell border, and a quick four-leaf clover in the center.

I thought it still looked rather plain, so I sprinkled some green and white confetti sprinkles over the shell borders.

With our corned beef and cabbage dinner that night, we had green beer and decorated with festive paper napkins...

... and ate yummy cake for dessert!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

lime green layer jello for st. patrick's day

There weren't very many things to sign up for on the sheet for the St. Patrick's Day party at Matthew's preschool this year.  A few slots for napkins or plates were still open, but I had been wanting to make cookies this year, and that section was already full!  In fact, only one food item was left ... lime jello.  So that's what I signed up for.

Last year the same thing happened with the Valentine's Day party, and I ended up making seven-layer rainbow jello.  I thought I could do the same thing again, except this time I would only have green and white layers.  So I used the same recipe as last time, except instead of four different flavors jello, I only used lime jello.

For the white layers, I didn't have any sweetened condensed milk on hand, so I ended up using a 12 oz. can of evaporated milk with 2/3 cup sugar whisked in.  I think it ended up tasting the same, however after the gelatin hardened the consistency wasn't as firm as it should have been, which didn't surprise me since evaporated milk is much more watery than sweetened condensed milk.

In the end, Matthew missed out on the party completely - he had a fever that morning, so he had to stay home from school that day.  Poor kid, he was so upset!  He kept saying, "But they're going to have a pinata!".  So I saved some jello just for him, and then I brought the rest to school.  Hope everyone at the party enjoyed it!