Sunday, October 12, 2008

Thanksgiving Turkey Cupcakes

These were so much fun to make!

For Canadians, this was Thanksgiving day weekend. I hadn't made cupcakes for a week or two, so I went all out for this one!
I don't usually go to this much trouble to decorate cupcakes, but when I saw this idea in the book Hello Cupcake! I couldn't resist.

The cupcakes are pumpkin pie flavoured. I picked this flavour because it's a good traditional Thanksgiving flavour and because BF is allergic to it, so now that he's out of the country for a bit it's one of the few chances I have to make it (although of course I would rather have him back than all the pumpkin cupcakes in the world). They turned out perfect! So moist and fluffy, I was really pleased. The recipe is from Crazy About Cupcakes and it's basically a regular golden cupcake recipe with less milk and 1 1/2 cups of pureed pumpkin and lots of spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves). They were so good!

The tricky part was getting the same number of regular cupcakes and mini cupcakes. I basically just filled the muffin pans one cake at a time. It was a little nerve wracking though, because since I had exactly the same number of small cupcakes and regular cupcakes (the recipe made 20 of each), I couldn't eat one before decorating to test them out. This is the first time I've ever served something to people that I haven't tested myself so I was a bit scared, but luckily they turned out great.

The frosting is just a plain vanilla buttercream, spread on with a spatula rather than piped. The eyes are piped frosting.


For his tail feathers, I used maple cookies that are pretty common around here. They're sandwich cookies like Oreos, so I just split them in half and scraped off the frosting with the back of a butter knife. I think they turned out really pretty because they're such a nice shape for feathers. On each one, there are three pieces of candy corn attached with frosting. The nose is also made of candy corn, with a waddle cut from a piece of Fruit-by-the-foot.

For added decoration I used some cute Wilton autumn cupcake cups and rolled the cupcakes in some sprinkles (before the rest of the decorations of course).

I'm really pleased with how they turned out and they weren't nearly as difficult or time consuming as I would have expected. My sister helped out too so we were done really quickly. They were definitely a hit!

19 comments:

Allison said...

those look amazing! i think i need to pick up that book because pumpkin cupcakes sound fantastic. then i need to get up to Canada so I can try out the maple cookies too, but of course, all in the name of making the perfect turkey!

judith said...

Those did turn out cute. I'm thinking of getting that book too. Does it have any chocolate cupcake recipes? I think I have seen those Maple cookies at World Market here in our area.

Jacki said...

Hi Allison!

Thanks! If I had any cookies left over I would offer to send you some. Let me know if you want me to email you the recipe. I just don't like to post them online because they're from a book, you know?

Hi Jomamma!

There's a great recipe for chocolate cupcakes in that book, it's called "rich chocolate cupcakes" I believe. That's also where I got the chocolate beer cupcakes recipe. I definitely recommend. The idea of finding maple stuff at a world market made me giggle. It's all over the place here, so I take it for granted I think.

Tami said...

Those are so adorable! They are almost to cute to eat!

Anonymous said...

very cute cupcake~
still learinng to bake well.. so in future i can make cute bakery stuff~

Jacki said...

Hi Tami!

Thanks! Everything usually gets eaten cute or otherwise :)

Hi Jolenesiah!
You will have so much fun learning to bake! There's no end to the learning process as far as I can tell. I feel like I'm always searching for another perfect recipe! Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you :)

Unknown said...

Super cute Jacki!

My Sweet & Saucy said...

Love these! They turned out absolutely adorable!

Anonymous said...

These look awesome... and I missed them! You realize I will need to have a selection of all the cupcakes and bentos that I have missed since being away!

Jacki said...

I'm afraid they don't last that long and you know how neurotic I get about cupcakes that are more than two days old :P

Big Boys Oven said...

hey this looks awesomly fantastic, so cute with such humour. . . I bet you had put a lot of effort, well done!

Jacki said...

It actually didn't take as long as it looks! With two people making them, we were done 20 turkeys in under an hour

Anonymous said...

Waoua, these cupcakes are just too cute. How did you manage to eat them?I don't even know where to begin :)
By the way, nice bento blog. I have added you on my blog.

Jacki said...

Hi Fiquo!

It's kind of sad actually. To eat them, the first thing you do is decapitate them :P Then you bite of their noses and eat the tailfeathers and you're left with two cupcakes. It's pretty straight forward from there :)

Allison said...

hi Jacki,

I just came back here and saw the offer for the recipe. that would be awesome.

My email is allison.enoch and it's at gmail.com. i'm just trying to seperate it out so i dont get loaded with spam haha.

thanks!

Allison said...

I just wanted to let you know how excited I am to finally make these tomorrow. I went out tonight and got all the ingredients. As I was leaving the store I realized I needed something to make the tail. I'm in the US so no maple cookies around here - I had to settle for chocolate chip. I have no idea what to make a nose out of though since I'm out of candy corn. Oh well, they'll turn out interesting just definitely not as pretty as yours.

Jacki said...

Hi Allison!

I hope they turn out amazing for you! I think that chocolate chip cookies would work just as well :) If you can't find candy corn, maybe you could try cutting caramel squares into triangles?

I would love to see a picture of your version! If you take one, can you send it to me? jackisbento@gmail.com

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Hello,
I wanted to let you know that I made my own turkey cupcakes for the American Thanksgiving and post them on my blog, so I have add your blog link as my source of inspiration.
Thanks again :)

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