St. Patrick’s Day Cauldron Cupcakes

  Ingredients for Cupcakes:
  1 box Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Yellow Cake Mix, 15.25 oz.
  Cake mix requires: 3 eggs, 1 cup of water, and 1/3 cup of butter
  Ingredients for center filling:   
  1 cup of sour cream
  1 cup of white sugar
  1 cup of sweetened coconut
  Ingredients for frosting:
  6 oz. Ghirardelli Dark Melting Chocolate wafers
  6 oz. Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet or Bitter-Sweet Premium baking chocolate chips
  1 cup of Sour Cream 
  Ingredients for decorations:
  1 cup of coconut
  5-10 drops of green food coloring gel
  12-24 plastic pots of gold, 2.5 inch (Party Store or Amazon)
  4-5 bags of Palmer’s chocolate gold coins, (Albertson’s or Party Store)
  Hard paper to crumble up or newspaper to fill bottoms of plastic Cauldrons
  Optional: St. Patrick’s Day paper plates
  Preparation:
In large mixing bowl, add cake mix, eggs, water and butter. Use a hand mixer and mix for 30 seconds on low and 2 minutes on medium
Use cupcake trays and fill 24 cupcake paper cups 2/3 full with cake batter
Bake in the oven on 350 for 18-20 minutes – Don’t overcook! You want them moist
Remove pans from oven and slowly put the cupcakes on a wire cooling rack
Making the cupcake filling:
In a medium bowl add in your one cup sour cream, one cup sugar, and one cup coconut and stir for one minute until smooth
Making the green coconut that looks like grass:
In a small bowl combine your cup of sweetened coconut with a few drops of dark green food coloring gel. Slowly mix together and if it’s not green enough, add another drop or too.
Making the Frosting:
Optional: You can substitute chocolate for white chocolate…
Over a double boiler or in the microwave in a microwave save bowl, melt your chocolate and stir until smooth. This takes about 1 1/2 – 2 minutes on 30 minute intervals. Don’t over microwave, you will burn your chocolate
In the melted chocolate bowl stir in one cup of sour cream.
Start building your cupcakes:
Cut a quarter size circle in the center of each cake and pop out the cake. Use a small spoon and add 1 tablespoon of cupcake filling to the center of the cupcake. Place the cake back in its hole
Spread chocolate frosting on the tops of each cupcake using a butter knife or icing spatula
Sprinkle green coconut on top of the chocolate
Crush up a small ball of paper and put in the bottom of each plastic cauldron pot. This will help elevate the gold coins. Add 4-6 coins in each pot
You can place the plastic cauldron pot on top of each cupcake or if you are hand delivering these, just put the cupcakes on the plate and the cauldron on the side of the cupcakes
Other ideas circles around St. Patrick’s Day and green cakes:
Dirt Bike Cake –
St. Patrick’s Day Cookie dough Chocolate Chip Cake – http://neighborchicks.blogspot.com/2012/03/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-cake.html