Is it St. Patrick's Day yet?

For Valentine's Day I avoided baking a red velvet cupcake for the blog, I guess in hopes of avoiding the cliche. To shake things up a little bit I put this recipe together. I was very pleased by the outcome. Not only are they an intense green color, they are deliciously moist & topped with a "just sweet enough" cream cheese frosting. 

Green Velvet Cupcake

For the batter:

2 1/2 c cake flour

2 c sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp cocoa - I used Valrhona

1 1/2 oz. green food coloring

1 c buttermilk, room temperature

1 c oil

2 eggs, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp baking soda

For the frosting:

1 8oz pkg cream cheese, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla 

2-3 tbsp water

2 lbs powdered sugar

Turn your oven to 350 degrees, and prep your cupcake pans.

Combine flour, sugar, and salt in your mixer bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk milk, oil, eggs, and vanilla together. With your mixer on low, slowly add milk mixture to your flour. Mix until thoroughly combined. In a small bowl, make a paste with the cocoa and food coloring. This will be thick. Flip your mixer back on, then add the green paste. Mix this in really well, then remove bowl from mixer. Put the soda in a little bowl, add vinegar, then prepare for a fun show! Your concoction will begin to bubble & foam like a science project volcano. Fold this to your batter, and make sure you combine it well.

Fill your cupcake liners about 3/4 full. This batter will be very thin, so be careful, or your kitchen will end up like mine, with little small drops of green all over the counter. Bake cupcakes at 350 for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 335 degrees, and bake for another 5 minutes.

Cool cupcakes in the pan for 10 minutes, then remove to cooling rack. While these cool, go ahead and make your frosting.  

I'm not the world's biggest cream cheese frosting fan, but I wanted to come up with something that still tasted cream cheasy, but still had the texture of a buttercream. Here is what I did. 

Toss your cream cheese and butter into a mixer and whip for about a minute, or until nice and creamy. Add vanilla and about 1 tbsp water and combine. Now, slowly, start adding your confectioners sugar. If your mixer starts to sound exhausted, add some more water. I ended up using 2 1/2 tbsp. Mix to your desired consistency, then pipe or spread on your cupcakes. Even after I piped a huge pile of frosting on all of my cupcakes, I ended up having a bunch of frosting left over. 

Enjoy!!