I cannot tell a lie: I've back-dated this blog post. It's actually January right now, but Eli loves Thanksgiving (he thinks it may be his favorite holiday, due to the giblets), and he specifically requested that I tell you about my turkey cupcakes, even though he wasn't there when I baked them.
Because he wasn't there to help me, what started out as a fun project soon became sort of difficult, then frustrating, challenging, and almost a lost cause. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.
My good friend, N, sent me a picture of some cookie/candy turkeys she'd seen and suggested they would make great cupcake toppers. I'm not 100% sure she was serious, but my mind was made up as soon as I saw the picture. I had to make these little turkeys!
The first step was procuring the ingredients, which was no easy feat. Have you ever tried to find candy corn post-Halloween? I don't know about where you live, but where I live, it's next to impossible. So, what did I do? I did what any twenty-first century woman would do: I ordered candy corn online. You didn't know this was possible? Don't worry. Neither did I.
Should you ever find yourself in the position of buying candy corn online, let me offer you a bit of unsolicited advice. The pictures of the bags of candy corn may not be true to size. The size of the candy corn bags may not be fully disclosed. Be careful. Otherwise, you, too, may be the somewhat reluctant owner of almost seven pounds of candy corn.
Okay, back to the cupcake making story! Today was one of my alternate work schedule days off, and so I thought I'd spend a couple of hours early this morning making the cupcakes. Little did I know that in addition to making cupcakes all morning, I was still making them well in the afternoon. From start to finish, this was a nine-hour endeavor! Eli is telling me not to complain and urges me instead to share with you this picture of the ingredients. According to Eli, it's hard to know where you're going if you don't know where you started. So, without further ado, here are all of the ingredients for 48 turkey cupcakes.
The first step was to put five candy corn "feathers" into each Double Stuf Oreo. I chose Double Stuf Oreos rather than the regular kind beacuse I figured the extra portion of filling would give me more room to place each feather. Just for good measure, I anchored each feather with a little dab of chocolate frosting. It didn't take me much time to have all of the feathers in place on 48 cookies. That's 240 feathers for those of you who are keeping track.
That was the easiest part of this project. The next step, fusing together each Oreo with feathers with the Oreo that was the base of the cupcake topper, was the most difficult. For each set of Oreos, I put some chocolate frosting on the top of one and on the edge of the other, and then I had to hold the two Oreos together for two minutes while the frosting began to set, for a grand total of 96 minutes, or more than an hour-and-a-half!!! I then had to let the Oreos further set for about an hour before I could do anything else. That in and of itself was tricky, but what was even trickier was that the added weight of the feathers was just too much in some cases, and more than half of the Oreos fell over and I had to begin the process all over again. Ack! Here is a picture of what the Oreos looked like once they were combined.
While waiting for the frosting on the Oreos to set, I prepared the 48 turkey bodies (mini Reeses peanut butter cups), 48 turkey heads (Whoppers), and 48 turkey beaks (the white tips of candy corn; I think they look like baby teeth!).
Once I was sure the connection between the Oreos was strong enough, I lay each "turkey" on his back and attached the Reeses peanut butter cup body with a little bit of chocolate frosting.
Then, I put a bit of frosting onto the bottom and side of a Whopper and stuck that onto the body as the turkey head. That was a bit difficult, because given that the Whopper is round, it was inclined to roll right off, so I had to hold it in place longer than I had the Reeses peanut butter cup.
By this point, it was almost 5:00 in the afternoon, and I felt I was entitled to a break from the turkey craziness.
After a brief few moments of indulgence, it was time to get back to work! Next, with a little bit of yellow frosting, I attached a candy corn tip beak onto each Whopper turkey head.
And then it was time for the eyes. I thought this would be difficult, because the black non-pareil eyes are so small, but it turned out this step wasn't so tricky after all, although you'll note that the eyes are uneven on some of the turkey faces! For each eye, I put a little dab of yellow frosting onto the Whopper head, then smushed a black non-pareil into the middle of the dot of frosting.
Then, I added a little line of red frosting under each turkey chin to make a teeny turkey gobbler. Or is it called a gobble? What are those things called? And what are they for? I have no idea!
While the turkey faces were drying, I made some cream cheese frosting and frosted the four dozen German chocolate cupcakes I'd baked earlier today.
Once I was sure the turkey faces had set, I stood up each little turkey and made feet out of yellow frosting. The lines of frosting were thicker than I'd hoped for, so the turkey feet are messier than I'd planned.
Here is the whole army of 48 turkeys, ready to march to the tops of 48 German chocolate cupcakes!
When I first placed the turkeys on top of the cupcakes, there wasn't enough frosting to hold the turkeys in place, and they fell over. Fortunately, I'd made enough frosting that I was able to add more to each cupcake, and then I jammed the turkeys into place. Here are a dozen cupcakes, topped with turkeys.
I finished the project! It was much more involved and time consuming than I had anticipated. I don't think I'll ever make these turkey cupcake toppers again. Or if I do, I'll be sure to do so at a time when Eli's calendar is open, so he can provide much-needed moral support!
