St. Patrick's Cake (Carolan's Cake)

While the Celebration Cake I made for my husband's birthday is undoubtedly very Irish with a hefty serving of Bailey's, I couldn't help but feel that a green cake with even more Irish cream would be a better St. Patrick's cake.  So I set out to make the best green alcoholic cake I could!

WARNING This cake contains alcohol.  Approximately 1/2 cup of it has NOT been baked out.  Probably not particularly appropriate to share with small children. (Or at least not other people's small children)

Ingredients:
Cake
1 box of Duncan Hines Blue Velvet cake mix

1 box (4 serving) French vanilla instant pudding
4 eggs
1 stick of butter, melted
1 cup of Carolan's Irish Cream (or Bailey's, or whatever you prefer.  I use Carolan's because it's cheaper and tastes the same)
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp yellow food coloring
Frosting
2 sticks of butter, softened (sitting at room temperature for about 4 hours)
1/2 a stick of cream cheese (4 oz) softened
3 cups of powdered sugar
1/2 cup of Carolan's Irish Cream (etc etc, same as above)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions
Preheat oven to 350.  Butter two 9-inch cake pans (make sure to get the bottom corners or they may refuse to come out.)

In a large bowl, beat together all of the cake batter ingredients.  Add more yellow coloring if needed to get the right shade of green.  The batter will be thicker than most cake batters due to the pudding mix, so don't be alarmed.

Spoon batter into pans, dividing it as equally as you can.  Smooth out as well as you can with a spatula and tap the pans on the counter a few times (knocks out the air bubbles).  Now is the time to redistribute if you notice one pan is much more full than the other.

Bake for 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Leave them in the pans on the stovetop (or countertop) for 10 minutes to cool, then flip out onto a cooling rack if you have one or a dishtowel if you don't.  Let them cool completely (at least an hour)

In a large bowl, beat together butter and cream cheese until thoroughly combined.  Add powdered sugar ON LOW* and blend until thoroughly combined (will be VERY stiff and hard to work with).  Blend in the Irish cream (start slow and then you can speed up) and the vanilla.

Smooth onto the cake with a cake or rubber spatula (I've actually had better luck with the flat side of a butter knife than a rubber spatula, truth be told) and top with green sprinkles.  If you want to get really fancy, take a stencil of a shamrock and hold it over the icing and only use sprinkles in that area for a nice pattern (I was not feeling that fancy)

*Go ahead.  Add it on high, I dare you.  Just don't come crying to me when more of that sugar is on your kitchen walls and you than in the bowl.