Layered Pudding Cupcake Parfaits and St. Patrick's Day Potato Planting

This past Monday we had a very fun St. Patrick's Day celebration. We celebrated with friends, had a nice dinner and a fun St. Patrick's Day potato planting ceremony. We finished out the day watching Darby O'Gill and the Little People and enjoyed delicious layered pudding cupcake parfaits.

Our potato planting ceremony was fun, the kids were good sports with my goofy idea. :) I have always liked to plant potatoes on St. Patrick's Day, many years it is just too rainy and I have to wait a week or so, but this year there were nice sun breaks, so I decide to have a little fun with our planting. I had ordered some dirt from Ireland to sprinkle in with our potatoes, which we grow in potato grow bags. The kids each took some of the seed potatoes and planted them in the grow bags, then we all got a handful of Irish dirt and gave each bag of potatoes a sprinkle. It was silly fun and I hope we have a nice mini crop of Red Pontiac potatoes!

Then to add to the fun and goofiness of the event, I brought out our little leprechaun, the kids picked this out years ago when we saw it while shopping, it sings and twirls it's shillelagh. So we ended our ceremony with a concert from our little leprechaun. :)

Our St. Patrick's Day dessert was easy and delicious. I knew I wanted to make a layered cupcake of some sort in my jelly jars, so I came cup with this fun combination.

I started by baking a batch of devil's food cake cupcakes, making sure to not overfill the cupcake papers so the cupcakes wouldn't be too wide to fit in the jelly jars (the cupcakes that were too big I did trim down a bit). When the cupcakes were cooled I chose twelve and sliced each one in half. Then I made a whole pint worth of whipped cream, using heavy cream and a few tablespoons of sugar, and green food coloring, and beating on high until it was a nice green bunch of fresh whipped cream. Last, I mixed up two large boxes of chocolate Jello-O instant chocolate pudding and was ready to assemble the parfaits.

I filled each jelly jar with a layer of chocolate pudding, then half of a cupcake, then I piped in a layer of whipped cream (I put the whipped cream in a gallon sized freezer bag and cut off the bottom corner to use as a piping bag), then added another layer of pudding, then the top half of the cupcake, and topped it with whipped cream, and a sprinkle of green sugar. They looked wonderful and were delicious! What a fun way to have a cupcake! I will definitely be making these again, and I look forward to trying different flavor combinations for different holidays!

So that was our fun St. Patrick's Day, a fun celebration with family and friends!