Happy St Patrick's Day

I know I'm a few days late, but I made, err, actually iced these cupcakes on St Patty's day so I thought I'd make them green!  Since I was making them green, I thought well why don't I make them minty too.  These are inspired by my friend Jaclyn's delicious Peppermint Mocha Cupcakes that she shared with us at Christmas time.

 The cupcake is the same chocolate cake recipe that I used for Brian's birthday cupcakes.  Find the recipe here!  Then I tried to make a buttercream mint icing.  I think I was fairly successful with it, although I made quite the mess in the process (I had butter everywhere!).  I think the next time I make this icing, I'm going to add more sugar and probably beat the butter for longer in hopes to get the icing creamier/fluffier.

Mint Icing:
to frost ~15 cupcakes (half the cake recipe)
13 T butter, softened (This is almost 1.5 sticks...I just happened to have 7/8 of a stick lying around so I used that + half a stick)
~1 c powdered sugar (didn't measure this just kept adding until it didn't taste too buttery)
1 t peppermint extract
dash of milk
green food coloring

Making this icing I realized that turning food different colors is fun!  I am definitely going to be looking for more desserts that I can use food coloring in.  I think I also want to try a mint chocolate chip cupcake.  I'll probably hold off on that for awhile though because as you can tell from the posts recently I've been doing a lot of baking and not enough cooking.  I haven't done a new dinner recipe in a week or two now.  The main reason was because I had a sinus infection and nothing sounded good and all I wanted to do was hang out on the couch.  I think I'm finally shaking that so let the newness begin!