Happy St. Patrick's Day

feeling a little Irish guilt (is that a thing??) today as I scroll through facebook seeing everyone's leprechaun visits, green pancakes, tales of corned beef cooking, etc.
with the maiden name Meagher and the married name Mullen, to say we're a little Irish in this house would be like saying that there's only a few legos in our house...

many moons, and 3 kids ago, we used to go into NYC to celebrate St. Patrick's day with my dad & step-mother - with a name like {Patrick Meagher} my dad takes "his" holiday very seriously...

Cindy, {Patrick} aka dad, Megan, me & Chris waiting for the train into the city

how pathetic is this - I just realized that this pic is in a folder that says St. Patrick's Day 2002, but I think it might be 2001, getting old stinks...
anyway... we have some great memories from those Paddy's days of yore, and one day we will do it again!

for the past few years my dad & Cindy have become famous for their gigantic Irish blast, and for a non-Celt Cindy really makes a mean corned beef!
and because I am such a last minute rose, I just gave some thought to what I should bring to the party (surprised aren't you?).
I've been seeing lots of Chocolate Stout cupcakes with Irish cream frosting floating around Pinterest. I must admit, I am not a Guinness fan (sorry dad!), so the stout part does not appeal to me, and I'm a bit selfish when it comes to my baking - I don't usually waste my time baking anything that I don't personally want to eat.
since time is not on my side, and I'm a big fan of making everything easier, I decided to let Betty help - the one and only Betty Crocker. I'm a BIG fan of a box cake mix - I love to doctor them up a bit, but this time I just grabbed a box of Chocolate Fudge cake mix and baked them up.
here's where the Irish comes into play...
I checked out 3 different Irish Cream frosting recipes that I found on Pinterest - 2 called for cream cheese, and 1 was a buttercream. they all had the same basic ingredients, just differing amounts of each, so I decided to wing it - and you can too!

{Bailey's Irish Cream Cheese Frosting}

• I creamed together 1 stick of softened butter and an 8oz block of softened cream cheese
• next is the fun part - add some Bailey's Irish Cream - I put in somewhere between 4-6 TBS (totally up to you how strong you want them to be)
• now for the totally unmeasured part - I gradually added powdered sugar until my frosting was to the desired consistency (I like it stiff enough that I can use a decorator tip, but not so stiff that it's too sweet)

so without further ado here are my lazy man's {St. Patrick's Day} cupcakes!