Pinterest Success or Fail: Turkey Cupcakes

Once a month or so I like to share with you some pins that I have tried from Pinterest, and we will see if they are a Pinterest success or fail. Sometimes they may be recipes, and sometimes they may be crafts or anything else I might be able to come up with.

At times I can be creative and inspired when it comes to kids crafts and treats for school, and other times… not so much. Whether I make cute homemade Valentine’s or purchase the cheap box from the store is mostly based on my inspiration at the time. This is many times dictated by how busy we are as a family.

For my kids’ school Thanksgiving parties this year I decided to try these adorable turkey cupcakes. I’ll walk you through my personal experience, and you can decide if it was a Pinterest success or fail. I got the original idea for these cupcakes from Food, Fun & Faraway Places (linked). I actually could not find the direct link to the recipe when I was making them, so I turned to my current favorite (cheater) cupcake recipe here. This recipe uses a box but dresses it up a little with some extras to make it super yummy.

Here’s how the process went for us:

My youngest daughter helped me make these creations. We made the delicious chocolate cupcakes using a boxed cake mix and the recipe above, using whatever cupcake liners we had available.

The Oreos, well, I discovered a good method of getting them apart with most of the cream still on one side AND without breaking them. Use a butter knife to slide down one side of the cookie so all the cream comes off with the other side. How the original cupcake maker made her Oreo cookie eyes so clean and white remains a mystery to me. Try as we might, the chocolate cookie crumbs remained on the eyes.

We used a little store bought chocolate frosting on the top of each cupcake to help everything stick on. We then proceeded with construction. My daughter and I took turns putting on the cookie eyes with M&M’s and attaching the candy corn pieces to the fudge cookies. We should have used 5 of the candy corn pieces like the original but, eh, potato, potato. A little bit of melted chocolate that we had in the pantry was used to stick the candy corn on the cookie.

As for the M&M’s, well, you can see from our picture that the turkeys each have different colored eyes. I purchased 4 bags of M&M’s, and in the entire four bags, there were only 8… EIGHT brown M&M’s. Really?! If you want them to look perfect like the original, you will probably need to purchase your M&M’s directly from their website. There you can select the exact colors you want. While this may be a great option for a special event, it was a little out of our price range for a school party. We however just made colorful eyes!

As for the gobbler my creativity was waning at this point, so we went for using candy corn. I will note that the fudge cookies were a little difficult to get them to stand up on the cupcake without falling over. Our solution was adding some extra frosting behind the cookie for support.

All in all, I feel this pin was a success, but what do you think? Pinterest success or fail? Do you have a recipe or craft you would like me to try to see if I end up with a Pinterest success or fail? If so, comment below and let me know so I can give it a try!