Thanksgiving Dessert: Fun Turkey Cupcakes!

 

It is really hard to find fun and silly Thanksgiving dessert ideas for children.  I saw a few versions of Turkey cupcakes that I thought were adorable and I wanted to share a version of my own.  I think these would be adorable for class parties or just as a treat for the kids table- perhaps looking at these on the dessert table will help convince them to behave during dinner. 😉

I saw some really fun ideas for Thanksgiving treats but a lot of them involved peanut butter cups and really looked like a lot of work.  That might be a bit much if you are making a big batch of these for a class party.  I can tell you these cupcakes do take a little bit of time but they are absolutely adorable and pretty fast to assemble.   Plus your kids will absolutely love them!

If you do want to make these be sure to grab a bag of candy corn around Halloween- it can be a little tricky to find candy corn in November.  I have seen it year round at CVS though.

Here is what you need:

• Wilton Candy Eyes
• Candy Corn
• Cupcake Mix (yellow or brown)
• Chocolate Frosting

So these are extremely easy to put together.  You want to start with a basic yellow cupcake recipe.  A box mix is fine or here is a basic yellow cupcake from Food Network.

Next whip up the frosting- this is super delicious chocolate buttercream and it reminds me of a Texas Sheetcake.  You can use canned frosting but this one is so fast to whip up and about 1000 times better then any store bought frosting I have had.

This recipe comes from All Recipes and it will make ample frosting for your cupcakes- at least 12 cupcakes.

I just baked box cupcakes in plain cupcake liners and then spread a thin layer of frosting on top.

 

The next step is to put some of the frosting in a Ziploc bag or a pastry bag and swirl a little circle for the head onto your cupcake. It doesn’t have to be perfect- about the size of a quarter is perfect.

Once you have the turkey frosted and the head on just take the candy corn and poke it down in the back to create tail feathers.  I did two rows of tail feathers- about 9 candies in total.  Just one row is still really cute if you want to reduce the sugar factor a little.

Once you have the feathers, you can use the Wilton candy eyes and carefully smoosh those down on the head.  These add so much personality to the turkey!

And the last step is to add the beak.  I cut a candy corn to create the little beak- the full size candy corn was a little too big for my cupcakes.

If you’d like to add feet as well they are really cute.  I just cut the tip off candy corn and then dotted the end with frosting to attach the feet to the cupcake liner.

Here is how it looked- very simple and fast!

Oh and one note- this frosting is kind of a mix between icing and frosting so you definitely want to put all the candy in right after you frost.  It will set a little otherwise and crack a little when you try to add the candies.

The kids will get a kick out of these!

If you decide to try these please come back and let me know what you think!

 

 

And you can see lots more Thanksgiving Ideas including crafts and recipes and decor on my Pinterest board.