If you are looking for an easy recipe for Green Velvet Cupcakes or a Green Velvet Cake for St. Patrick’s Day, I’ve got you covered! These easy St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes have been of my most popular holiday recipes for years. This simple green velvet recipe is fun, festive and delicious, especially when topped with cream cheese frosting!
Red velvet cake is all the rage for Valentine’s Day, so naturally St. Patrick’s Day brings visions of green velvet cupcakes and green velvet cake. How many things could one make with a batch of green velvet cake batter? How about green velvet cupcakes, green velvet mini cupcakes, green velvet whoopie pies and green velvet cake pops. Oh, and you can also make green velvet cake, of course! These are the perfect easy St. Patrick’s Day desserts.
Green Velvet Cake
For the record I made all of them. Also for the record, yes, I am crazy. I am also Irish, which somehow seems like a good defense for making four different items clock full of green food coloring to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Though most likely it has far more to do with my being crazy.
I’ll be spreading these out over a few different blog posts, but let’s start with making the green velvet cake recipe. Here’s what you need…
Green Velvet Cupcakes
Grease your cake pans, muffin tins, whoopie pie pans, whatever method you decide to go with. Or be crazy like me and do them all. Lightly stir eggs in a medium bowl with whisk. Add in remaining liquid ingredients. Whisk until blended and sit aside. I waited until the very end to add the food coloring, because frankly, that much food coloring scares me and I had to work out the courage to do it.
Place all dry ingredients in your mixing bowl and stir together well.
Now take a deep breath and dump all that food coloring, yes the entire bottle, into the wet ingredients.
Not too bad. But now stir…
Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients and mix on medium-high for about a minute or two until well combined and green as the day is long. Note, this is NOT the time to accidentally crank the Kitcheaid on to high. Unless you want a green, and slightly vinegar smelling kitchen. Avoid that at all costs, nobody needs that much green velvet in their lives.
Look it’s St. Patrick’s Day in my kitchen!
Pour the batter into cake pans or cupcake pans. I did the cake and cupcakes first, and than added 1/4 cup of flour to the remaining batter to thicken it up a bit before putting it in the whoopie pie pan.
Care to lick the spoon? Me, not so much, which is a first in my cake making history.
Baking times will vary based on what you are using. For one 8″ cake pan, it was about 22 minutes for me.
Regular size cupcakes were around 16, mini cupcakes about 13 and the whoopie pie pan was about 13 as well.
Green Velvet Cake And Green Velvet Cupcakes Recipes
Green Velvet Cake
Ingredients
CAKE
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 Tablespoon cocoa
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup oil
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 Tablespoon vinegar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 oz green food coloring
CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
- 1 package of softened cream cheese
- 1/4 cup softened butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 bag powdered sugar 2 lb bag
- Milk as needed
Instructions
CAKE
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Grease your cake pans, muffin tins, whoopie pie pans, whatever method you decide to go with.
- Lightly stir eggs in a medium bowl with whisk. Add in remaining liquid ingredients. Whisk until blended, the stir in food coloring and sit aside.
- Place all dry ingredients in your mixing bowl and stir together well.
- Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients and mix on medium-high for about a minute or two until well combined.
- Pour the batter into cake pans or cupcake pans.
- Baking times will vary based on what you are using. For one 8″ cake pan, it was about 22 minutes. Regular size cupcakes were around 16 minutes, mini cupcakes and whoopie pie pans were both about 13 minutes.
FROSTING
- Cream together cream cheese, butter and vanilla in a bowl until smooth. Gradually add in powdered sugar and continue mixing. Add in milk as needed to reach the desired consistency. Store frosting and frosted cupcakes in refrigerator.
Notes
Disclaimer
Nutrition information is estimated as a courtesy. If using for medical purposes, please verify information using your own nutritional calculator. Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
You can frost straight from the bowl, though I use my handy Ziploc bag to pipe on my frosting.
Now frost and decorate until your little heart is content. I used about half of my frosting for the green velvet cupcakes and green velvet whoopie pies, and put the remainder in the fridge to be used to make green velvet cake pops. Here are some of the super sweet cupcakes…
The cute shamrock sprinkles and fun cupcake liners!
Check out how pretty and green they are. My daughter was thrilled! Well at least until I stopped her mid-cupcake realizing that I hadn’t taken a picture of the great green insides of these babies.
And for those that would like something a little smaller – green velvet mini cupcakes…
And best of all, my kitchen somehow came out of this without any big globs of green anywhere. Whew.
These velvet cake recipes are so much fun. Are you looking for a different color velvet than green velvet? I have some yummy options for you in every color of the velvet rainbow, if that’s a thing. First up red velvet cookie bars.
How about pink velvet cupcakes!
Sweetapolita has a gorgeous purple velvet cake.
Sprinkle Bakes has some stunning blue velvet cupcakes.
I even have some orange velvet cupcakes!
And if you look hard enough, you can even find a yellow velvet cake.
Now that we’ve covered the velvet rainbow, check out green velvet whoopie pies!
Rebecca Mealey says
Very nice! Great instructions and photos, I am going to use your recipe for a plant cell cake for my granddaughters, and I will link to your blog if that is OK.
Erica says
Thank you for sharing this crazy delicious recipe!! I doubled it for a 3-year-old’s St. Patrick’s Day birthday party. It made about 45 cupcakes. They didn’t rise as much as I expected, though I forgot the vinegar so maybe that is why. They still rose into nice domes and were a beautiful green. I took the food coloring down by a bit: 1.5 ounces for a doubled batch. Was the perfect green! The frosting made a TON. Obviously didn’t need to double it. Oh, well, now I will have to make something to frost. I added more cream cheese and less sugar because I thought it was way too sweet and I prefer being able to taste the tangy-ness of the cream cheese. These were a massive hit at the party; they were so rich and yummy!! Will def. be making again and checking out the rest of your blog. Thank you!!!
Ana says
I made mini cupcakes for Bingo nite. They look like a field of clover in the gold paper cups I used. Used a candy shamrock to decorate the top. The cake itself is very tasty and not to sweet and very moist will definitely add this recipe to my files. Thank you for sharing.
Jenny says
YUMMY!!! I made them for St. Patrick’s Day! They were awesome, everyone loved them… Thank you!
Nora says
I used this recipe for cupcakes and it made 24 cupcakes, and took 20 minutes each batch to bake 🙂 Thanks!
Jaime says
Hey Christi! Your cupcakes are so gorgeous! I tried making them today and they came out terrible. They were gummy and the taste was not “Red velvet” like. Wondering where I went wrong? Any tips? I followed the recipe exactly but not sure where I went wrong!
amber says
where is michaels where you got the shamrock sprinkles??
?
Lesa says
Christie, THANKS! I’m baking them tonight 🙂
@Tara, my Red Velvet recipe I use calls for Apple Cider Vinegar and I’m using the same just changing the coloring.
MaggieG says
It is not St. Patty’s Day. Please can you and every American who calls it this – stop. It’s St. Patrick’s Day or at a push Paddy’s Day – if you are Irish.
Tara says
does anyone know if i can use apple cider vinegar in this recipe instead of white vinegar?