I love me some St. Patrick’s day goodies, and a fun and easy way to get festive for this simple holiday is through cupcakes! I mean, cupcakes are always great for celebrating, but you can really have some fun with St. Patrick’s Day!

• Think green with toppings! Mint Oreos are one of my all time favorite treats. Crush some up and add them to your chocolate cupcake batter, and top your cupcake with green frosting and some whole Mint Oreos! Andes Mints are so ridiculously good. You could garnish your cupcake with a whole one, or bits and crumbles of crushed ones. Mint M&M's can easily be sprinkled on to a layer of frosting. And then of course, green sprinkles if you want texture with your green color!
• Pull-apart cakes are pretty popular right now, and they are so fun and easy to put together! I mean, it’s literally just putting a bunch of cupcakes next to each other and decorating them as though they were one. You can make a giant shamrock by placing together cupcakes in the general shape of a shamrock (like thee together to make each leaf) and spreading a layer of green frosting to connect them all. You could also do a pull-apart rainbow! Or a cloud, and just use streamers to create the rainbow. A pot of gold would also be pretty easy to put together. A giant piece of black poster paper can be your pot, and each cupcake with yellow frosting can be the individual pieces of gold.
• Rainbows are also festive this time of year! You can do rainbow frosting, or if that’s too intense just do a few cupcakes topped in various colors of the rainbow. You can use gummy candy (like Airhead Extremes) to create little rainbows, and marshmallows and wrapped Rolos make the perfect clouds and golden ends of rainbows! You can also top a cupcake with M&M’s, Skittles, or rainbow sprinkles for an easy colorful topping.
• Hide a surprise inside the cupcake! Golden sprinkles can help give you pot of gold vibes, but you could use green sprinkles, Lucky Charms, or green M&M’s. Once the cupcakes are baked, use a cookie scoop to hollow out the middle and add whatever fun surprise you want and then add the frosting on top for the final touch!
• Make cute little leprechauns! If you have a variety of decorating tips, you can create little leprechaun faces, but you could easily provide leprechaun vibes with a single tip as well! Just swirl bright orange frosting onto your green cupcake (pistachio or green velvet!), and top with a little hat. You can create a hat by putting a large marshmallow on a cookie (like an Oreo thin) and dipping in melted green candy melts. Not too hard but super cute and effective!

How will you decorate your St. Paddy’s day cupcakes?

    Camille Hoffmann
    Weekly Newsletter Contributor since 2014
    Email the author! camille@dvo.com