Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and Nutter Butter Turkeys, 11/17

Gobble Gobble! Happy (early) Thanksgiving. Since SOMEONE gets a whole week off at Thanksgiving (no complaints here, even if it means a little pay cut), this is Cupcake Wednesday's Thanksgiving. And for the festivities, I have pumpkin cupcakes from a tried and true recipe (into which I added pumpkin pie spice! Oh yes, I am THAT daring) and my cream cheese frosting. Topping these babies off are little "turkeys" made with 1 1/2 Nutter Butters, a few pieces of candy corn, mini chocolate chips, and a little extra frosting. I got the idea from another web site (just Google "Nutter Butter Turkey Cupcakes") and, while they have wings as well, I could NOT for the life of me fit the wings on the turkey. So guess what, my turkey can't fly (wait, can turkeys fly anyway? I know they can run really fast). The turkey cupcakes got rave reviews for their design, and would be great for little kids, but as it is, we turn in to little kids whenever we get around cupcakes, so they worked perfectly for us!

Fun Cupcake-Themed Items

So this is a new topic for my blog, but since I have received so many FUN cupcake themed items in the last year or so, I thought they (and the gift givers) deserved a shout out. I will add posts periodically. The first blog of this sort is dedicated to Lisa (see her blog), who found, at Bath and Body Works, this awesome hand sanitizer!! It absolutely smells like Red Velvet cupcakes, and it even has GLITTER! It's such a Catch-22--I want to use it but I don't want it to get used up too quickly. And at this time of the school year (think flu season and no one covering their mouths--you would think a 16 year old knew to do that by now but I guess not...), teachers are grateful for any type of germ fighter!!

Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting with Jelly Bellys, 11/09

Cupcake Wednesday took place on Tuesday since our week is totally messed up (but I'm not complaining about a four day weekend!). The spiced cupcakes are from Crazy About Cupcakes, and the cream cheese frosting (my own) was dyed a light shade of brown for the base. To celebrate the fall month of November, and the coming of Thanksgiving, I took an idea from What's New, Cupcake! and decorated the cupcakes like "Indian Corn." I had the most fun picking out the Jelly Belly colors and decorating them in a fun pattern. Squished together, they REALLY do look like corn on the cob! The leaves are another issue. The book suggests making it from philo dough, which I did, and it was my first time working with it. Well, mine looks NOTHING like theirs :( , but I tried. The definitely LOOKED like leaves, but propped up around the corn they just kind of fell flat. I suppose I will have to practice to get the technique right. Go to Hello Cupcake's website to see how it REALLY should look (or buy the book, it's TOTALLY worth it!).