Everyone's a little Irish on St Patty's Day!

Top o' the mornin' to you! Soooo happy St Patty's Day is around the corner!

I would bake a soda bread for joy but the bakery just up the road has the #1 rated Irish Soda Bread in the entire county so how do you compete with that? You don't. You give in. Every year I go and pick up a half dozen and deliver them to the people I love.

Everyone's a little Irish on St Patty's Day so have fun with it. If you're having a party you'll love this dessert table idea to set the mood!

If you're not as lucky as I am to have such an amazing soda bread baked fresh around the corner, here is a wonderful recipe that I have made other times of the year when the bakery doesn't supply it!

Irish Soda Bread

There are a few other traditional recipes I like to make for St Patrick's Day that you might want to add to your feast...

Colcannon... mashed potato with cabbage, ham and scallions

Colcannon is my kind of Irish! What can be better than potatoes on St Patricks Day? Potatoes with butter. And cabbage. And ham. Oh my! There are a few ways to make it including a cabbage and leek version but my family likes bacon so that gets added to our colcannon.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

The star of the show is the Corned Beef and Cabbage and the recipe above is a great starter. When I make corned beef and cabbage I cook the corned beef on its own for at least 2 1/2 hours before adding the cabbage and the carrots. I also usually put in a few beers with the water to flavor the corned beef during cooking. Try to find Harp or Smithwicks or Guinness in honor of the day! When I do add the cabbage I also add some chicken broth and butter to help flavor the vegetables. It then cooks for an hour further. If you cook the cabbage with the corned beef at the start you'll just wind up with really mushy cabbage.

Now for the fun part: dessert! No, these are not traditional desserts. They're just fun.

The Brown Eyed Baker makes these cupcakes with Guinness in them! Genius!

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

In keeping with the theme of "how to get drunk from dessert" we fully recommend these Baileys Irish Cream Brownies from Wee Kitchens blog! (Okay, you're not going to get drunk eating these brownies. Unless you make 17 batches. And eat them all.)

Baileys Irish Cream Brownies

And if you just want the straight up liquor sans dessert, try this whiskey cocktail...

Irish Martini

Last but not least, if you don't have this movie get online now and get it. Now. I'll wait. Seriously. And if you haven't seen it, lose my blog address or rectify the problem immediately! I'm not a huge John Wayne fan because he's always the cowboy and those are never my kinda movies. But John Wayne in The Quiet Man? It's a must! Have I mentioned that you need to buy this movie? Get on eBay if you can't locate it anywhere else and watch it on St. Patricks Day and thank me later!

The Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara

I don't know how anyone walks away from this movie without humming the Rakes of Mallows tune “dum da, dum da, dum da, diddle didda; dum da, dum da, dum da, diddle didda” for an entire week afterwards and smiling! I'm doing it now!

I'm also a huge fan of Waking Ned Devine and if you haven't seen it you absolutely should add it to your "must watch" list! But not before seeing and swooning over The Quiet Man!

Sláinte! Dance as if no one were watching, sing as if no one were listening, and live every day as if it were your last!