Vanilla cupcakes chocolate frosting all decked out for Thanksgiving. A fun dessert for Thanksgiving weekend, besides what will you eat for dessert when the pumpkin pie is gone? These Turkey Face Cupcakes will be perfect, trust me!

Thanksgiving seems to revolve around one major dessert.

PUMPKIN PIE!

Well, this year I figured most people would tire of serving after serving of pumpkin pie and I was going to be dropping some of these cuties off to some friends,

I think they were happy they weren’t pumpkin or pecan related, to be honest.

Pie seems to get eaten pretty fast by the time breakfast rolls around the day after Thanksgiving in our house, so these would be perfect for dessert, drop-per by-ers and YOU of course. You look like you could use a cute cupcake. I know I could after tackling a 20-pound turkey!

You can find detailed instructions on how to make the royal icing eyes here, and to make the beak and waddle just tint 1/2 cup orange and 1/2 cup red and pipe a sideways V in orange and three dots touching the point on the V so you can remove them once they dry easily from the wax paper.

The royal icing pieces need to be COMPLETELY dry. I make them a day ahead of time. They are small and would most likely take a couple of hours to dry if you don’t have overnight.

Place frosting into a piping bag with a #809 round tip and pipe a dollop of frosting onto each cupcake and then carefully add the beaks and waddles, then the eyes. I placed the beaks onto the peeks of the frosting to push them smoothly into the cupcakes.

If you want to add the “feathers” you can add candy corn poked into the back 1/2 edge of the cupcakes. Just place the small tip of candy corn into the cupcakes.

Vanilla Bean Cupcake Recipe makes 24

Print Recipe

Chocolate Frosting

A fun sweet simple Thanksgiving turkey face cupcakes, add candy corn to the back edge if you want to. I think I like this simplistic turkey.

Prep Time10

Total Time10

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: cupcakes

Author: Diane Schmidt - createdbydiane.com

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream or milk
1/2 cup melted and cooled chocolate {60% cacao Ghirardelli choc chips)
2 tablespoons cup unsweetened cocoa powder dutch process
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Beat butter until smooth and creamy.
Add powdered sugar and cream, mix until completely combined.
Beat in melted chocolate, cocoa and vanilla.
Mix until smooth.
Place frosting into a piping bag with a large round tip like an#809
Place a dollop of frosting onto each cupcake then either pipe the eyes, beaks, and waddles or make them with royal icing and then add the on top.