{Easy} Spring Chick Cupcakes

Last winter when Kate posted her darling Candy Penguin Cupcakes, my favorite part were the cute little beaks.  I started thinking about what other sorts of animals you could make with beaks like that (not that there’s tons of choices) and remembered doing these cute little chickies (auto spell-check really wants me to write “sickies” right there…) when I was a kid.  (Okay, I swear I’m done writing in parenthesis now.) I sort of have a love-hate relationship with fancy cupcakes.  They’re so fun to look at, but some of them are SO labor intensive that when you’re all finished creating your little pieces of art it almost hurts to see people bite into them.  So I LOVE projects like this that literally take an extra 2 minutes of your time, but look totally adorable.

The other great thing is that you don’t have to search high and low for specific hard-to-find candies.  (If you’ve done a lot of themed cupcakes, you know what I’m talking about…)  I grab a tube of mini M&M’s by the check stand at the grocery store.  You can check the baking isle too and see if they have the bags near the chocolate chips.   The other thing you’ll need is something orange and squishy, like Starburst, or those orange Tootsie Rolls.  Laffy Taffy, Airheads, etc.  would work too.  I noticed my WinCo store sells the orange tootsies in the bulk section right now so I just bought 4 or 5, which totally beats having to buy one of those giant bags full of a few orange ones and then a bunch of the non desirable tootsie roll flavors.  You know, like the normal ones.  Does anyone even eat those things?

If you’re using Starburst, one pack should be plenty.  Unless you get a freak pack with only one orange.  You could easily use the yellows too, so you should be good with one pack.  You can 12 beaks out of just 2 starburst.  Just use a knife to cut the candy into small pieces and use your hands to mold a little triangle shape.

For the top of the cupcakes you’ll need some tinted coconut.  Just drop 2 or 3 drops of liquid food coloring into the coconut and stir with a fork.

At first it just looks weird and all of the color clumps together, but keep on stirring and I promise it will turn a lovely shade of baby-chick yellow.   I’m also sure someone in the comments will tell me to just put the coconut in a ziplock bag and shake, but I think it’s much easier to distribute the color with a fork.

Then just grab a cupcake and spread on some frosting.  I tinted my frosting a pale yellow so it would blend in with the coconut.

Cover the top with coconut, and place your little eyes and beaks on. See?  Instant cuteness.