Hooray for St. Patrick's Day!

Every year we go to my mom and dad's for St. Patrick's Day dinner.  While I am mostly Italian (well, Italian-American) , I am just as proud of my Irish heritage.  So I love celebrating this holiday with my family.

So, I gussied up my wee Irish lassie

and we were ready to go! (She loved her sparkly green dress! It was very "Riverdance"!)


Back to the food:

I think it's a common misconception that Irish food is boring, bland, or just revolving around potatoes.  I think over the years it has evolved and it's really so delicious!  I LOVE eating corned beef, shepherd's pie, scones, and...well...all the traditional dishes on this day!  I especially loved the selection of Irish cheeses my mom put out.  They were so creamy and good!  Cheese is my second love, right after all things sweet!

I volunteered to make the shepherd's pie, which came out AMAZING I must say.  But I also made something sweet to go along with the meal.

After considering my options...I decided to make rice krispie pops.  Everyone likes rice krispie treats and I knew that my nieces and nephew (as well as my little sweetie) would just love them!

I have been wanting to try out some new decorating tools I'd just gotten and thought this was a good opportunity to do so.  And while I was at it, I decided to get crafty and experiment with a few different designs:

What's the L for?  Take your pick: Leprechaun, Leah, Lucky, Liz...the list could go on and on!

I just thought the dots were a really cool look!  (They almost looked like white strawberries.)

Shamrocks were a natural choice, of course!  A national symbol of Ireland people!

And here's a close up of a shamrock:

 Swirls are harder than they look everyone!  But they looked pretty cool too :)

And lastly, a more traditional drizzling technique:

Here are some group shots of my little rice krispie pop army:

And here's how I displayed them on the dessert table- in some mugs:

The consensus from the whole family was that they were delicious!  I have to admit I had like 3 of them!  They were like potato chips, I couldn't just have one! And my toughest little critic loved them as well:

She was very taken in by the dots and gobbled her pop all up :).

Well my friends, after all the baking I did last week I am off to put my feet up and relax a little bit!

I hope you all liked my latest sweet creation and that you all had a fabulous St. Patrick's Day as well!

Til next time, don't forget to eat your sweets!