#8 Green Minty Chocolate Cupcakes!

It's  March, and March means green.  These green minty cupcakes are supposed to be flavored with mint flavoring, but I adapted the recipe and used peppermint flavoring instead. I served these cupcakes last week  at our church's monthly Community dinner. My friend Dan, who always comes to help out at our monthly dinner, samples my cupcakes and gives me very useful feedback about my little cuppies.  This time he commented that he thinks this one is my best cupcake yet!  That of course made me very excited and happy to share this recipe with you!  

   Now I think I have said this before, but there is no shame in using a box cake mix. I do that frequently as it is much easier to make, and often box mixes taste better than what can be made from scratch.  There are exceptions of course, carrot cake, peanut butter cake, banana cake, are always made from scratch. But chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, lemon and lime cakes from box mixes taste great when you Doctor them up just a little bit. My whole point in sharing all this is that this cupcake was made from a box mix.  The vanilla cream filling in the middle makes these cupcakes taste like a Shamrock shake from McDonald's!

Here's what you need to get started:

Cakes:

1 box chocolate cake mix any flavor of chocolate will do

3 eggs

1/2 cup oil

1 cup brewed coffee

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Frosting:

1/2 cup butter

4 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk or light cream

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Green gel food coloring

12-18 Andes mints chopped

Filling: 1/2 pint heavy cream

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Here's how to put it all together:

Mix cake mix, eggs, oil , Coffee and peppermint extract together at medium speed for 2 minutes. Line cupcake  pans with  24 cupcake liners and fill each cup 2/3 full with cake mix. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 12-16 minutes.  You know they are done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  

Let cupcakes cool completely before filling. You can use a cupcake corer or a knife to cut a hole in the middle of each cupcake. Whip the heavy whipping cream on high speed with vanilla and powdered sugar until you have a thick whipped cream consistency.  Place the whipped cream in a Piping Bag or baggy, cut a hole in the bottom of the bag and insert cream filling in the middle of each cupcake. 

For frosting,  chop up Andes mints and set aside.  In mixing bowl cream butter and 2 cups powdered sugar on high speed.  Mix in milk and rest of powdered sugar and peppermint extract until smooth.  Add 1 or 2 drops of green gel food coloring to get a pale green, minty color.  Pipe frosting onto cupcakes with your favorite tip.  Top with a few pieces of Andes mints and enjoy!