St. Paddy's Day Recipes for Kids(Please Post Here)

[Baking_Bud]

Hello! Well, the next holiday coming is St. Patrick's Day, which falls on Monday, March 17th... When my son's were younger, I use to love being room mom and making special treats for the kids. I will post some ideas here, and please feel free to post your's too! I'm sure that moms who are still needing recipes to make their children's classroom parties fun, will appreciate all that we can add!

Always My Best, Baking Bud

[Baking_Bud]

Shamrock Cake

1/2 gallon mint chocolate chip ice cream - softened
1 jar hot fudge sauce
1 white or yellow cake (baked in a 9X13 pan to its directions)
green maraschino cherries (or a little St. Paddy's candy treat!)

Directions: Spread the softened ice cream in a 9-by-13-inch cake pan. Freeze until hard, about 1 hour. With a shamrock cookie cutter, cut out ice-cream shamrocks to your number of guest needs. To serve, heat the hot-fudge sauce. Place a piece of cake on a plate, top with the cut-out ice-cream shamrock, drizzle with the hot-fudge sauce and add a green cherry/ and or candy.

NOTE: Cut the cake according to the number of shamrock ice cream pieces that you need. I use to do the sauces of all types right out of my crockpot. Easier to transport (but DO put extra heavy duty foil ALL THE WAY AROUND the entire crockpot securing the lid, so the contents don't end up spilled in your car. Place it in a box, and brace it up with towels!

[Baking_Bud]

Shamrock Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 lb soft butter or margarine
1/2 c packed brown sugar
1/3 c granulated sugar
2 ts vanilla extract
1/2 ts salt
1 lg egg yolk
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 c (12 oz bag) Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Chocolate Mini-Morsels
16 oz prepared vanilla frosting-colored green
Green coarse cake store style sugar or decorative St. Paddy's day candies

Directions: Beat the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla extract and salt in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in egg yolk. Gradually beat in flour. Stir in morsels. Shape dough into 2 round balls and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about 1 hour or until firm. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll each ball to 1/4" thickness between 2 sheets of waxed paper. Cut into shamrock shapes; place on ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Spread with frosting and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Into the center of the frosting you could put a cute St. Paddy's day style candy. You can make your own sugar by putting a few drops of food coloring with pure cane sugar in a baggy, and then keep blending it with inside the bag with your fingers until the color is throughout.

NOTE: Any type of cookie dough can be made into Shamrock cookies, and then decorated as the above chocolate chip ones were. No time? Use the pre-made doughs where you just slice and bake.

[Baking_Bud]

St. Patrick's Day Punch

Ingredients:
1/2 gallon lime sherbet
2 liter 7-up or Sprite

Directions: Let the sherbet soften in the refrigerator for about 1 to 2 hours before preparing. Mix sherbet and the soda in a punch bowl or large mixing bowl with a hand mixer on medium speed until well blended. Serve immediately or chill in the refrigerator.

[Baking_Bud]

Leprechaun Party Punch

2 packages unsweetened lemon-lime Kool-Aid
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 quart water - (with ice)
1 liter 7-Up
1 quart lime sherbet

Mix: Kool-Aid and sugar and add the water/ice. Add in slowly the 7-up, and then stir in the sherbet.

[Baking_Bud]

Luck O' The Irish Punch

2 envelopes lime soft drink powder
2 cups sugar
2 quarts cold water
2- 6 oz. cans frozen lemonade concentrate - thawed
3 1/2 cups ginger ale

Directions: Mix together and serve cold.

NOTE: Punch recipes without ice cream blends look nice with decorative ICE made in larger size jello molds. You can float fruit it in as you freeze it for a nice visual presentation.

[Baking_Bud]

Shamrock Shake (for your wee ones at home! Big ones too!)

Put in Blender:

One banana
2 cups of lime sherbet
2 cups of milk

Makes about 3 servings.

[Baking_Bud]

Leprechaun's Shake

1 cup milk
2 scoops vanilla nonfat frozen yogurt
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
2-3 drops green food coloring

Pour all ingredients into a blender and whirl until smooth and green.

[Baking_Bud]

Kid Friendly St. Paddy's Day Jell-O Salad

1 3 ounce package lime Jell-O
1 pint vanilla ice-cream
1 or 2 bananas - sliced

Mix the Jell-O with 1-1/2 cups boiling water. Stir in ice-cream. Chill until partially set. Stir in sliced bananas. Chill until firm.

[Baking_Bud]

Leprechaun Finger Jell-O

Mix 4 envelopes of unflavored KNOX gelatin with 3 -3 oz. packages lime Jell-O. Stir it carefully until NO white specks remain from the KNOX! Now mix in 4 cups of boiling hot water. Pour into 13x9 pan and chill to set. Cut with a shamrock cookie cutter.

NOTE: The addition of the KNOX to the Jell-O makes the cut out Jell-O pieces VERY FIRM, so easy for little hands to hold and eat!

[Baking_Bud]

St. Paddy's Cookie Cutter Style Sandwiches

white and wheat bread
sandwich meat > like bologna or ?
individual American cheese slices

I came up with this idea one year while sitting and playing with my cookie cutters. We were having a full lunch, from sandwiches on down. Plain sandwiches didn't sound like much fun, so I started seeing what I could do with the cutters... What I ended up with was ADORABLE Christmas sandwiches, bearing the design of each cutter that I use.

So first > select some nice designed St. Patricts day cookie cutters.

Half of your needed bread slices will bear the design, and the other half will be the backs of the sandwiches and left plain... So you can do a combo of wheat and white for both the fronts and the backs!

Take the cutter and press into the slice of bread. Press FIRMLY in order to cut the bread out by the edges of the cutters. Once out, now take and gently press with your finger the design into the bread. You want it to make the impression sharply, so give some good pressure! When done tap out the bread cut out piece. If need be, use the edge of a table knife to help pull it out. Once you've done a few, you will fly through these!

Now cut out an equal number of backs, but don't press the impression into it.

NOTE: For the bread slices I put these in a sealed baggy with paper towels between the rows!

Cut out the needed number of lunchmeat and cheese pieces to match the bread, again using the same cutter. It will all fit together like a cute puzzle when assembling!

NOTE: I would do a 'row' of each of the above, laying them out on wax paper. You can stack them like this in a sealed baggie, so you can cut out all the night before.

When putting them together, put a little mayo on one side and then fit the pieces together! SO CUTE!

Use leftover bread pieces for crumbs on casseroles or in meat loaf. Meat and cheese pieces can be put into hoggie sandwiches for home eating!

[Baking_Bud]

Shamrock Ice Cream Sandwich Cookies

Use the refrigerated sugar cookie dough (if they do a Shamrock centered one, that would be cute!) Roll it out and use a large shamrock cookie cutter to cut out cookies, sprinkle with some green sugar, and bake according to the directions. While the cookies are baking soften some vanilla ice cream (you could tint it green if you so desired at this point) and smooth it out in a pan to about 1/2 inch thickness, and refreeze it. Cut the same size shamrocks from the ice cream, When the cookies are completely cooled, make ice cream sandwiches with the cookies and ice cream. Remember you need two cookies per sandwich, so do your math carefully!

NOTE: Green and blue food colorings tend to 'tint' your teeth the most, so consider this when using either of these two food colors!