Pot of Gold Cupcakes – Chocolate Cupcakes with Lemon Mousse Filling

I’m all about traditional foods when it comes to holiday’s. I love diving deep into the roots of a culture and pulling up recipes that were used way back when. My family’s cookbooks and recipe boxes are great for that. They’re filled with recipes from parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on. My step dad’s recipe box goes all the way back to the mid 1700’s (allegedly) with recipes from Ireland, Germany and France.

Sometimes, however, you just want to be creative and cute. You want to make something that’s not necessarily traditional but still fitting to the holiday. Take St. Patrick’s Day for instance. I’ve shared a few of my family’s traditional Irish St. Patrick’s Day recipes. These are passed down recipes that represent Ireland, but I want to share yummy American derived St. Patrick’s Day goodies too! And, sometimes, you just have to bring the kids in the kitchen and let them decorate the goodies.

These Pot of Gold Cupcakes stem from my love of lemon & chocolate combinations. They’re like the Sonny & Cher of the food groups. You keep expecting them not to work out. Sometimes 1 will overpower the other, but when you put them together they make great things happen. It was hard to choose how I wanted my lemon filling. I whipped up some lemon curd and was just going to use that but decided to go an extra step and make a lemon mousse.

All I did was add a cup of whipped cream to the lemon curd. It lightened up the mixture and spread it out so I could fill more cupcakes! I also used my favorite Hershey Cake recipe since it’s one of those that doesn’t need improving. I used the same method of filling the cupcakes as I did with my Mounds Cupcakes. We also used canned white frosting and the kids dyed it green – call me lazy (because I am today!) They came out so good and fluffy; if you’re not on the lemon & chocolate bandwagon take my hand and I’ll pull you in!

Note: The kids had free reign with the decorating of these cupcakes. They mixed icings, played with decorating tips and made a huge mess. They had an incredible amount of fun though – why not let yours do the same?!