St. Patrick's Day Dinner Menu

 Quite a few years back, we had a little disaster with corned beef, I took it out of the package and roasted it like a regular brisket. The trash was quite full that night. I'd actually never heard of corned beef and cabbage until my adult life, I suppose my family chose to embrace the Italian side because the food is better. However that may be, a little variety never hurts and I have actually learned to make corned beef. Next year, my goal is to prepare the brine myself. And before you freak out about that, you can easily order juniper berries online.

So here is my menu:

The whole spread

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Soda bread, Kerrygold Irish Butter, and Kerrygold Dubliner cheese

I used the bottle to make a centerpiece

Bailey's Irish Cream flavored buttercream, my piping skills have no effect on the tastiness

The cake that changed my mind about chocolate cake

This really isn't a difficult dinner to make. For the corned beef, I either order it or just buy it at Costco. The key thing is to rinse the brine off the beef before cooking, and then it is pretty much just covering it with water and gently boiling until tender. I set it aside once it it tender and add my vegetables, boiling for about half and hour. You can add whatever vegetables you like but I had a whole cabbage, quartered, a large onion, quartered, about a dozen baby reds and some carrots in mine. I just fill up the pot with all the veggies that can fit.


Soda bread could not be easier, I found this no fail recipe at Brown Eyed Baker. I just follow it to the letter, I can easily whip up two loaves in under 15 minutes. If you don't usually like soda bread, this will make you a fan. I served it with Irish butter, which made it even better, and some good Irish cheese.

The Guinness cake comes from the same website as the soda bread but with a variation on the frosting. I'm not much of a drinker, so I just buy a small nipsized bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream. I beat 3 sticks of butter in my mixer until it s fluffy and add about 4 cups of powdered sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla, the bottle of Bailey's and a pinch of salt, if I am using unsalted butter. I tint it to the right color and spread it on the cake. For the piped frosting I just use the same method (no Bailey's though) with 1 stick of butter and a scant cup of powdered sugar, and more food coloring. If you need to thin the frosting, you can always use milk or half and half, I usually add the powdered sugar gradually until I have the consistency that I want. One last thing, the directions for this recipe say about 35 minutes for the cake, I found that I went closer to an hour. Make the cake! You will never regret it!


The centerpiece is just the bottle from the stout that I used for the cake. I ran out of green food coloring, otherwise the carnations would have been green, but it still looked nice. If your guest brings Australian wine, like mine did, you can imagine it was made by the descendants of the transported Irish. I have a Pandora station on my TV so I set it up to play Irish music while we dine, if you wish to do the same, search for Wolfetones, The Irish Rovers, or Paddy Reilly. Afterwards, you can play cribbage. I don't know if that was ever an Irish thing, but all of the old Irish guys around here know how to play.


Happy St. Patrick's Day!