Pots of Gold

My first post and it's St.Patrick's Day! 

So for you guys today, I have this super cute little recipe that I modified for a 5th grade class:

And I'm going to share the recipe with you!

The whole thing came about when my sister came to me yesterday and informed me that she needed a treat for the party her class was having today, and that she had already told them that I would bake something. Now, in order to understand the dilemma here (or at least, it was for an 11 year old), you need to understand that she goes to a rather small school, and has been with pretty much the same class since she was 5. And this particular class have always had treats baked by me, from Schlopp and other fun snacks for Dr. Seuss week, to cake made in ice cream cones to look like, well, ice cream cones. So she was definitely a little worried (all those 5th grade expectations, ya know?)

So after, a little bit of thought and some Pinterest searching we found this cute little recipe, and had some fun with it.

To start, I mixed up some brownie mix, put it in little cupcake liners, and put it in the oven. Nothing too complicated there. I was feeling particularly lazy at the time, so I just used boxed brownie mix, but you could really use any type you want. Then, once those are done and cool, you get to do the fun part.

Once they were ready, I used a Wilton cupcake filling tip to core the brownies, since I made minis and they were to little for my cupcake corer. 

After a little bit of trial and error, I learned that it's better to make the cut and just push the middle down instead of trying to take out the middle like you would for a cupcake. Otherwise the center is to deep.

Once you have those all cored, you get to add the "gold"

For this, I used a combination of Wilton's yellow, gold, and white sprinkles. Just yellow looks perfectly okay, but I happened to have a little bit of the other two lying around that needed to be used up. I filled them with a baby spoon at first, but that proved to be messy, so later I used an icing tip to sort of funnel the sprinkles into the brownie.

Once that's all done, you can either whip up an batch of icing (recipe at the bottom), or you can use some store bought green icing.

To start with the icing, I used a #10 Wilton tip and a piping bag. To keep the sprinkles in, I started  by piping a little dollop of icing on top of the sprinkles for each brownie.

Once that was all done, I just piped a little dollop on top of each brownie, for presentation reasons.

Tada!

Buttercream Icing:

I usually make a double batch of this, and that's what I needed for these, but this is a single batch recipe. It makes about 2 cups of icing.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of vegetable shortening

1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter, softened (it is crucial that the butter is soft, otherwise your icing gets all lumpy, and you have to wait for it to soften anyway before you can continue)

1 teaspoon vanilla

2-3 cups confectioner's sugar (I usually do this to taste)

2 Tablespoons of milk (not always needed)

Instructions:

1. In a large bowl, beat shortening, butter, and vanilla until light and fluffy

2. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating on a medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often.

3.If icing appears dry, add milk slowly, add beat until once again light and fluffy

To get the icing to appear green, I used Wilton Leaf Green Icing Gel

The original idea for this recipe came from pizzazzerie.com

Come back later to read about my adventure with Corned Beef (it's my first time fixing it)!!!!