St Patrick's Day Beer Glass Cupcakes and Homemade Cupcake Wrappers

St Patrick's Day is almost here, so I thought I'd share some fun cupcake ideas with you that I've made in the past!

In the summer of 2011, I was commissioned to make my very first wedding cake.  I was so excited!  Then, as I met with the bride-to-be to talk about her big day, my excitement turned to utter GLEE.  This wasn't going to be your traditional wedding cake...no no!  The wedding reception was going to be at the Redhook Brewery in New Hampshire, so they wanted their cake to fit in with that theme.  As we talked more, we decided to incorporate their beer theme into the cake in three ways:

1 - A cupcake tower with "glasses of beer" cupcakes.
2 - The wedding cake (instead of being your round tiered cake) would be a KEG cake!
3 - I was to find some way to incorporate beer into the cake recipe itself (see recipe here).

Today I'm going to share the first component of this fun wedding's how-to, the "glass of beer" cupcakes, since they'd also work for St Patrick's Day.  They are super cute and super easy to make.

To make these, you'll need:

Baked cupcakes
Buttercream or cream cheese icing
Rose piping tip
Cupcake wrapper template
Large image of beer bubbles (multiple pages)

The trick to these "glass of beer" cupcakes is the beer bubble wrapper.  Custom cupcake wrappers are really a piece of cake (har har).  No need to buy them online or spend tons of money at Michael's..,just find some pretty paper and use a template to make your own.  There are lots of templates online - here's one you can use.  Since "beer bubbles paper" isn't on huge demand, I found an iStock image of bubbles, purchased it, and printed off 50 sheets at Kinkos.  Don't let yourself be held back by what's typical - there are TONS of images online you can buy the rights to.

Just print the template and cut out the cupcake wrapper shapes carefully.  You're not actually going to use what you cut out - you'll use the remaining sheet with the missing pieces instead.

Lay your template over the back side of the pretty paper, and trace the wrapper shapes onto the paper.  Then just cut out your wrappers!

For an extra flair, you can use decorative scissors when cutting the top edge, or a paper punch to add more detail.

Once your wrappers are sufficiently embellished, wrap them around the cupcake to see how tight they need to be.  Unwrap, tape at the same spot you measured earlier, and then drop your cupcake in it's new wrapper!

Once I had the outside of the mug done (aka the cupcake wrappers), it was time to add the frothy top!  To make the froth, I used a small rose tip and filled my piping bag with the white icing.  The frosting technique for this is pretty loose - just pipe "fluffy" swirls on top to resemble what would be the froth.  Just try to keep the frosting pretty low - froth doesn't go over the top of your beer mug, so your icing shouldn't either.

Once the cupcakes were transferred to the cupcake tower, it looked like a tower of beer mugs!  Such a fun treat!

Check back soon, as I'll be sharing the Chocolate Stout Cake recipe I used.  It's so good I prefer it to every other chocolate cake out there.