Vegetarian Turkey Cupcakes

I really wish I was creative enough to figure out how to decorate cupcakes like this on my own but alas, I am no artist. When commissioned to make some cupcakes for Thanksgiving at my parents' house (I am fortunate enough to get two Thanksgivings every year because my parents have theirs the Sunday before Turkey Day so we don't have to choose each year whether we go to their house or to the in-laws), I couldn't take my mind off of these adorable turkeys from What's New, Cupcake?, an amazing book given to me by a dear friend. I'm not even going to try to go into detail about how to create these because I didn't get any pictures of the decorating process, so my suggestion is just to buy the book- it's really worth it.
I needed to use up my vanilla beans because they were getting stiff, so I decided to make some more vanilla bean cupcakes. For some reason, I used a different recipe that I found and it only called for 1/4 cup of buttermilk, which I thought wasn't enough and I was right. I should have trusted my instincts, because they turned out really dry. My husband insisted I must have eaten a bad one because his was fine, but I think he was just trying to be nice because he knows how insane I get about my finished product. Which is why I could never have my own bakery- I am entirely too critical of my baking and would end up throwing away anything that isn't just right. But here is the tried-and-true recipe for vanilla bean cupcakes with the appropriate amount of liquid.


Ingredients: (makes about 16 cupcakes)
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean pod

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. Cut the vanilla bean pod in half to make it easier to scrape. Cut each half lengthwise and scrape the inside of each piece with a butter knife. Mix scraped vanilla seeds into buttermilk and discard empty bean pods. Beat butter until smooth and creamy, then add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating in between to combine. Add vanilla extract and beat until combined. Add flour mixture and buttermilk in the following order: 1/3 of the flour mixture, 1/2 of the buttermilk, 1/3 of the flour mixture, rest of the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour mixture. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean.

My new nickname should be the buttermilk baker because I now refuse to use milk in a cupcake- if I don't have buttermilk, I may die. My local grocery store (LOVE Publix) doesn't carry small cartons of buttermilk so I get to use the leftovers for biscuits and Irish Soda bread. Mmmmmm :)

So, the basics of the decorations: the "turkey" skins are caramels. You soften a few, roll them out, and cut a large rounded notch out of one end. Again, it's quite impossible to explain with just words so you MUST find the instructions somewhere else online or just buy the book. Top the cake with a mound of frosting, and shape the caramel over the frosting. On some of them, the frosting didn't spill out from underneath, so I had to add extra frosting around the edges so I could get the "lettuce" to stick. The "lettuce" is made from green fondant- the book tells you to use corn flakes coated in melted green frosting, but the fondant was one less step and much less mess. I just kneaded until soft, pinched off little pieces, and stuck them to the frosting around the edges of the cupcakes. Then, I took Grape Nuts cereal (well, the store brand is called "Nutty Nuggets." no lie.) and pressed it into the frosting where the cavity of the "turkey" was, just like it was stuffing spilling out of the bird. I took Pringles wheat sticks and pressed more softened caramel around them and shaped like a drumstick, then stuck them to the sides of the "turkey" with some water to hold them on. I think I ended up making them too big, and unfortunately then started to droop. So the legs pointed downwards after a while and I was supposed to pipe white frosting onto the tips of the "bones" from the legs, but after five hours of decorating, I didn't even care.
Here are more shots of my turkeys, if you look closely you can see the placement of all of the parts:

These make me tired just looking at them, because I'm remembering how much of a marathon of decorating it ended up being. BUT, they were cute and had the "wow" factor I like for my cupcakes. I'm formulating my Christmas flavors and thinking about White Chocolate Peppermint, inspired by some amazing cheesecake I had last night at the Cheesecake Factory. Not sure on the second flavor, but I'm hoping to make at least two batches of cupcakes this season and maybe more- some for work, some for the GAL/state attorney's offices, and some for family get togethers. Time to start working out my baking muscles.
Almost forgot- I made some cupcakes for work for Halloween. I did vanilla bean and chocolate and decorated the vanilla bean ones with fondant leaves (although they looked like feathers!) and some pumpkins from a bag of harvest mix: