Lucky Charms Cupcakes

Today we are making these adorably fun lucky charms cupcakes! They're perfect for St. Patrick's day cupcakes or if you're just in the mood to make an interesting cereal cupcake.

We were looking for a fun St. Patrick's day cupcake idea and figured why not use Lucky charms! I mean after that little leprachaun is iconic for the occasion. And all those rainbows and four-leaf clovers!

Plus this is such an insanely easy way to decorate cupcakes!

For this recipe, you'll be using your favorite vanilla cupcake recipe or your favorite cake mix.

And we'll making a buttercream icing. I love buttercream because it's easy to make and tastes amazing.

Buttercream frosting has a smooth consistency that makes it easy to work with when you’re decorating cakes or cupcakes.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Variations
• Equipment
• Storage
• Recipe

Ingredients

Your favorite vanilla cupcakes: You can use a boxed cake mix or your favorite vanilla cupcake recipe. We used vanilla cupcakes to make the colors of the buttercream frosting really pop.

Unsalted butter: Butter is a base ingredient for buttercream frosting. You'll want to use unsalted, room temperature butter.

Powdered Sugar: The powdered sugar, also known as icing sugar, is perfect for whipping up into icing. If you only have granulated sugar, you can pour it into a blender and grind it up into a fine powder and make your own powdered sugar.

Milk: The milk will help thin down the icing and make it more workable.

Vanilla Extract: Use the best one you can afford. I prefer the pure vanilla extract personally. It adds such a delicious, beautiful flavor.

Food Coloring: This is for the fun part! Gel food coloring is better in this recipe than the liquid kind. You'll use less of the dye and it won't change the texture the way liquid coloring can.

Lucky Charms cereal: And of course, the star of the show, The Lucky Charms. You won't need all of the cereal, but you'll need plenty of the quirky marshmallows.

You'll also need a pastry bag and tip for frosting the cupcakes.

See recipe card for quantities.

Instructions

This particular recipe will make enough vanilla frosting to frost 12 cupcakes using a pastry bag.

First start by making your cupcakes. Again, use your favorite homemade recipe or cake mix and bake those babies up.

Allow your cupcakes to cool completely before attempting to ice them. Otherwise you'll end up with runny icing that won't stick to your cupcakes.

In a large mixing bowl add in your room temperature butter, the powdered sugar and the milk. Using an electric mixer, beat together all of the ingredients starting on the low setting and gradually increasing the speed.

Beat the icing ingredients until smooth and it creates semi-stiff peaks.

Now divide your buttercream into 4 separate bowls for coloring. Add one color each of the gel food coloring to each bowl, so that each bowl has a different color.

For a deep, rich color, add about 2-3 small drops of the gel coloring.

Mix the food coloring well in each bowl of the buttercream.

You'll be creating a multicolored icing swirl that somehow is both green, but also rainbow! I don't know any icing colors that could get more St. Patrick's day.

Next you'll want to load up your piping bag. We used a Wilton Icing tip #21.

This part takes a tiny bit of finessing. Scoop the colored buttercream into the piping bag, alternating the colors.

Then make a generous, colorful frosting swirl on top of each of your cupcakes.

Next, grab the lucky charm cereal and marshmallows pieces and sprinkle onto your cupcakes. And there you go! Cute, quirky lucky charms cupcakes!

Hint: When loading your piping bag, use a separate spoon for each color. We just we in a circle globing the icing into the bag rotating between the colors.

It's also helpful to put your bag into a cup to hold the edges up while you load it with your colored frosting.

Variations

Frostings: We used a buttercream frosting because it holds its shape well. If you'd rather use a different type of homemade frosting, like a marshmallow frosting or a cream cheese frosting it'll totally work.

Just make sure the recipe is one that the icing will hold it's shape when you pipe it onto your cupcakes.

Cereal: We used the lucky charms cereal because we were whipping up a St. Patrick's day dessert. But, since these are technically "cereal cupcakes" it means you could really swap our the lucky charms for any cereal you'd like.

I'm sure  cinnamon toast crunch, fruity pebbles or really any of your favorite breakfast cereal would taste great sprinkled onto of your cupcakes.

Equipment

Making buttercream frosting, an electric hand mixer is my favorite. It saves lots of time and energy.

Beating the icing by hand is exhausting! And may just take away your love of baking forever.

Storage

These cupcakes are best stored at room temperature for 3-4 days. While you can store them in the fridge, the frosting will get harder because of the butter.