St. Patty's day green velvet cupcakes!

Is there anything better than a red velvet cupcake? Well maybe a green velvet on St. Patty's day? Yes. That is most definitely better!! I love St. Patrick's Day and red velvet cupcakes with the traditional buttercream (with anything else, it isn't technically red velvet).  Anywhooo, you can make red velvet into any color that you can find food coloring! I love the Mom's Mom's Red Velvet Cake off Chow Hound.  There's just something about using crisco that makes it feel right. If you're really against using crisco there are lots of recipes that use butter that will turn out wonderfully! If you're down to use crisco, here we go! 

What you'll need:

1/2 cup crisco

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 oz red food coloring (or green or blue..)

2 heaping tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour (regular flour will work too)

1 cup buttermilk (you can make your own)

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

To make your own buttermilk, add one tbsp vinegar to 1 cup milk. Let sit about 5 minutes.

Cream crisco and sugar together. Measuring crisco is tricky but do your best. If you have big air pockets over measure on top!

Almost as pretty as butter, but the mix isn't' nearly as tasty!

Next combine your two heaping (and I mean heaping) tbsp of cocoa powder and 2 oz of food color. If you skimp on your food color your cake won't be as moist. 

At first it won't seem to mix, but just keep stirring and eventually you'll get paste. Set aside.

Add the eggs to the sugar mixture, one at a time, mixing until combined.  Then add the color paste. Mix until combined. 

Add flour, salt and buttermilk.  Mix until smooth. 

Sprinkle the top of the batter with a tsp of baking soda. Pour 1 tsp of vinegar over this and gently fold into batter. Fold the vanilla in as well. 

Do not over stir!! Just combine and you're ready to go. This will make two 9 in cakes or nearly 24 cupcakes. I made 22. Fill cupcake liners to 3/4ths full. Bake at 350f. Cupcakes will bake in about 20 minutes and cakes in about 30. Make sure to keep an eye on them as times will vary. 

I had a severe buttercream mishap. I was using the mom's mom recipe and it came out all lumpy and gross. Nothing I was doing was doctoring it. So I gave up and started a new. 

Thankfully, I found a wonderful tutorial on the The Whisk Kid's website. This swiss meringue buttercream was out of this world!! Her tutorial is so good, I won't repeat it here, but here are just a few photos of my process. 

This beauty to this.. 

The most wonderful frosting I've had in a long while! 

Here's my festive finished product!!