Thanksgiving Turkey Cupcakes

Here at Accessories By Me we are just totally in love with Pinterest. While you can browse and bookmark virtually anything, I find it especially useful for finding new recipes and food ideas that I otherwise may not have noticed. Case in point: these incredibly adorable little candy turkeys. I saved these to my holiday board because they are so cute, but didn’t think I’d really have an opportunity to use them. And then it hit me – cupcake toppers! They look so regal sitting up there on the chocolate cupcakes, totally festive and worthy of a Thanksgiving dessert. Plus, these are a perfect project for kids if you have little ones that want to help out in the kitchen. (Or, big kids that love eating discarded pieces of candy. That would be me.)

This is all you need to make turkeys! Helloooooo candy!

Don’t you just love the holidays?!

THANKSGIVING TURKEY CUPCAKES

DIRECTIONS:

Ingredients/Supplies

Double Stuff Oreo Cookies
Candy Corn
Whoppers
Peanutbutter Cups
Chocolate frosting
Yellow Frosting
Optional: Red frosting
Optional: black sprinkles for eyes

*For these kinds of things I love to use the little pre-filled tubes of colored frosting you can buy in the baking isle.  The chocolate is easy to make, and homemade actually works a little better because you can make it stiff.  However for the colored details like yellow and red, these little tubes are great.  It doesn’t really matter what they taste like and they last forever (which is both cool and disturbing at the same time.) I’m using store-bought tubes for everything here purely for convenience- works great!

First step:  Grab a cookie.  You don’t have to put frosting in there, but I like to because it holds in the candy corn a little better. Just give it a little squeeze of chocolate.

Then stuff in your candycorn.  If you’re in some sort of candy corn shortage, you can cut off the white tips to use later for your beaks.  I think the candy corn sticks in better with the tip so I leave it on.  Go ahead and do all of the cookies through this step.

Next put a dab of frosting on the opposite end of the cookie and secure it to the “base” cookie.  It helps to place them next to a wall as they dry so they stay put.

While those are drying, unwrap your PB cups.  Take a sharp knife and cut a sliver off of one end.  (I don’t need to tell you what to do with the sliver, do I?)  It helps to gently cut in a sawing motion so you don’t break the PB cup.  (Although I wouldn’t have to tell you what to do with a broken one either, would I?)  Cut it from the bottom like I show here:

Once those are ready, flip your cookies over, but you may find it’s easy to keep them next to the wall.  My frosting was a bit soft, so they needed the extra support.

Place a dab of frosting on the pb cup, and place it on the cookie like so:

Now those little guys will need heads, so glue a whopper on there with frosting as well. I put frosting on the side of the whopper that hits both the cookie and the PB cup.  Wouldn’t want a turkey running around with its head cut off, would we??

While they’re still laying there, use a dab of frosting (I use yellow) and glue on the white tip of a candy corn for a beak.  Put two yellow dots on for eyes, and for the black spots in the eyes you can use a dab of chocolate frosting, or a mini chocolate chip, or a little sprinkle like I’ve used.  A sprinkle is really the perfect size if you have them.

Once the beak stays put you can flip them over and draw on some little yellow feet.  If you have red frosting too (usually comes in a set with the tube of yellow) you can add a little gobble gobble. Or whatever that thing is called.  What is it called?  I’m too lazy to google.  Extra giveaway entry for the first person who can tell me.  Okay not really but I’ll think you’re awesome.

And there you go, cute as can be!

These make really cute place card holders too, for either a kid, or adult table!  I just made little name tags and then I popped them in there on toothpicks.

How cute is my little turkey family?

Stick one on each plate and everyone will say “Awwwwwwe….” If you have kids old enough to handle making them, it’s a fun project for them to be in charge of.

They’re also darling combined with pilgrim hats.

Those are just marshmallows dipped in chocolate and placed on a fudge strip cookie.  Use yellow frosting to make the buckle.