DIY Leprechaun Hat Cupcakes For St. Patrick’s Day

If you’re planning a St. Patrick’s Day party or just want to celebrate with the family, you can make these fun Leprechaun Hat Cupcakes. Your kids will have a blast helping you put together the little hat wraps, decorating the cupcakes, and melting the chocolate.
These Leprechaun hat cupcakes wrappers will help dress up your cupcakes for St. Patrick’s Day. The pattern and instructions are for jumbo cupcakes, but if you want to use it for regular cupcakes, just trim down the wrap a little to match the size of a smaller cupcake and it will work fine.
I used a chocolate mold to make the shamrock for the top of the cupcake, but you could also use a cookie cutter and rolled fondant to make your shamrock if you’d like.

How to Make Leprechaun Hat Cupcakes
What You Will Need:

For the cupcakes-

• Jumbo cupcake pan
• Your favorite cake mix or recipe
• Jumbo cupcake wrappers
• Your favorite butter cream icing
• A shamrock chocolate mold
• Green food coloring
• Leprechaun Hat Wrap (printable pattern)
• Large star cake decorating tip and decorating bag for the icing

How to Make the Cupcakes
1. Bake your cupcakes according to the package or recipe directions. You may need to add a minute or two to your baking time since you’re making jumbo cupcakes.
2. While you’re cupcakes are baking, melt green chocolate melts according to the package directions, and put the melted chocolate in a decorator bag, or squirt bottle. Use the bag or bottle to fill shamrock shape chocolate molds, then set them aside to cool. You can also melt some white chocolate and swirl the white and green chocolate together.

3. Once your cupcakes have baked and cooled, mix up a batch of your favorite cake decorating icing, or use pre-made icing from the store.
4. Color the icing with green food color, until you get the shade you’d like. Remember the icing always gets a little darker as it dries.

5. Ice the cupcakes using a star decorating tip and decorator bag. Put the icing in the decorator bag with the tip on it, and swirl the icing around the cupcake top from the outside to the center.
6. Place the chocolate shamrock on top and set your cupcakes aside.
The Leprechaun Hat Cupcake Wrap:
What You’ll need:

• Two different shades of green cardstock or scrapbook paper
• A scrap of gold or yellow scrapbook paper
• Shamrock Hat Wrap pattern (link to pdf pattern here)
• Jumbo cupcakes
• Craft glue or scrapbook tape (optional: hot glue gun if adult is using it)
• Scissors

How to Make It:
1. I’ve attached the pattern for the Shamrock Hat Wrap, so you can print it out.
2. Cut out the pattern, lay it on your green cardstock or scrapbook paper and cut out the shamrock hat pieces with scissors.
3. Once you’ve cut out the pieces, lay the thinner hat band on the wider top hat, along the bottom and glue or tape them together.
4. Glue the gold buckle to the center of the hat band.

5. When the glue is dry wrap the hat around the base of the cupcake, and glue or tape in place. The glue gun works great for this step, since it dries quickly.

6. You can anchor the cupcake to the hat brim with a little tape, or just sit it in place. If you’ll need to move the cupcakes before serving them you should anchor it. If they’re not going far, just sit the cupcakes on the hat brim.

Kid’s Fun Tips:
When you’re ready to serve the Leprechaun hat cupcakes you can just slide them out of their hats, and send the leprechaun hats home with your guests as party favors.

Make this hat in black (without the shamrock) and you’ll have a Mad Hatter top hat for the Alice in Wonderland movie.
If you don’t want to make the chocolate shamrock, buy candy shamrocks at the store to top your cupcake.

More St. Patrick’s Day party ideas