Cute Turkey Cupcakes

Here is another idea for Thanksgiving cupcakes. This is a cute and sweet treat that every child (or child at heart) who saw these turkey cupcakes just loved it. And boy was it easy!

These cupcakes were made from Patty Gironda's Hummingbird Cupcake recipe from our latest issue of Newnan-Coweta Magazine (see the recipe, starting on page 40) but you can make any kind of cupcake you like. I used a butter cream icing, but Cream Cheese frosting will work. If using it for decorating, use only half the butter in the original recipe (1/4 cup butter rather than 1/2 cup). That way when you add the brown food coloring, the frosting will be a little thicker and will hold up better. I just mixed the brown food coloring until it was the color I liked.

You could always use a cocoa butter cream frosting recipe if you make chocolate cupcakes. Just tint the frosting brown or use chocolate frosting. For decorating purposes, the insides of the cupcakes really don't matter.

The turkey is really, really simple. Use a large icing bag -- at least 16 inches and a large tip coupler with a large star tip. Make large stars all over the tops of the cupcakes.

To make the head, nose and wings. Use two or three small (or mini) vanilla wafers and trim each wafer with kitchen shears until it is the perfect oval shape. The head is one wafer and the wings are each a half-wafer. You can save the "shavings" (which is what you will have) when you trim the cookies into the perfect shape for other recipes.

Some of the cookies broke and it took a couple of tries for me to create the perfect shape but after I made one of each, I got the hang of it.

The nose is a candy corn. I placed the large end of the candy corn underneath the edge of the head.

The wattle is a piece of strawberry fruit roll up, carefully cut with kitchen shears, or a sharp knife into a large teardrop shape. It was gently laid over the "beak" and part of the face.

I drew the eye on with a food coloring maker, but a mini chocolate chip could be pasted on with a tiny bit of frosting.

I put two rows of candy corn in the icing for the tail feathers. First I put five in the back row and then alternated with four pieces of candy corn on top.

I was very pleased and amazed that my turkey looked so good, using such common ingredients.

Perfect turkey for a Thanksgiving tray of cute cupcakes. I will have more cupcake decorating suggestions for you between now and Christmas.