Baby Chick Cupcakes

These sweet Baby Chick Cupcakes are made from dollops of yellow buttercream on top of the cupcakes of your choice. They are simple, fun and perfect for any Easter party!

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 🐥 Buttercream Chick Cupcakes for Easter

Our parade of cute Easter dessert ideas continues with these adorable Baby Chick Cupcakes! Unlike our Spring Chick Cupcakes, where the chicks are made from a variety of store-bought treats, these lil’ chicks are 100% pure buttercream, baby!

Not only are they delicious, but they are dead simple to make. Can you squeeze frosting out of a piping bag? Then you can make these chicks! And of course, I’m going to show you how to do it with step-by-step instructions and a video.

🧾 What You’ll Need

These Easter chicks cupcakes don’t require much – just a few simple ingredients and a handful of decorating tools, and you’ll be set! (Links are affiliate links and I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.)

Ingredients

• Cake mix: Because these cupcakes are all about the decorating, I recommend keeping it simple and using a boxed cake mix as your cupcake base. I love these with yellow or white cupcakes, but you could also use a chocolate, strawberry, or lemon cake mix instead. Want a homemade option? Check out the Spring Chick Cupcake recipe.
• Frosting: We’re using a simple homemade buttercream frosting for the baby chicks. If you’re looking for a shortcut, I do not recommend using store-bought canned frosting (ie, the frosting sold in plastic cans near the cake mixes.) It is too soft for this decorating technique. If your grocery store sells American buttercream-style frosting in the bakery section, that should work just fine.
• Small round sprinkles: I used tiny metallic nonpareils for the chick’s eyes. You could use any other sprinkles of your choice, or candy eyes, mini chocolate chips, or just a dab of darker buttercream.
• Gel food coloring: I used yellow food coloring to make yellow frosting for the chick’s body, and orange gel food coloring for his feet and beak. However, you can decorate the chick’s in any color scheme you like. You could do a variety of pastel shades and have an adorable little flock!

Equipment

• Cupcake liners: These baby chicks shine without much embellishment. You can use simple black liners, solid rainbow colored liners or add a splash of color with these adorable Easter cupcake liners.
• Piping bags: I like these disposable 12 inch piping bags. (I wash them and re-use them to reduce waste!)
• Large round piping tip: To make the chick’s bodies you can use a large round piping tip (like Ateco #809), or a regular coupler without any tip.
• Small round piping tip: The beak and feet are piped using a small round piping tip (like Ateco #4.)

📸 Photo Tutorial: How to Make Baby Chick Cupcakes

Here’s a step-by-step guide showing how to decorate these little chicks. Grab the full instructions in the recipe card up above.

Pipe the chick body and head

• Bake cupcakes and let them cool. Prepare the frosting and prep decorations.
• Fit a piping bag with a large round tip, or a plastic coupler. Fill the bag with yellow buttercream frosting. Squeeze the bag with consistent pressure to form a large round dollop of yellow icing on top of the cupcake.
• Stop the flow of buttercream and lift up slightly. Then pipe a second, smaller dollop right on top to form the chick’s head.

Pipe the chick’s feet and beak

• Fit a second piping bag with a coupler and a small round tip. Fill the bag with orange frosting.
• Make two zig-zag or “W” shapes at the base of each chick’s body to represent the feet.
• Pipe an orange beak on the front of each chick’s head.
• Add two sprinkles for eyes, and enjoy!

💭 Variations

• These cute chicks would be so fun to make in a variety of colors. You could do different colors for the bodies, feet and beaks.
• Experiment with different flavors for the cupcakes like chocolate, rainbow chip, carrot cake, or strawberry.
• Make your buttercream match the cake flavor you choose. You could go crazy with fun flavorings for the buttercream such as lemon, orange, almond, coconut, etc.
• You could also make fancy filled cupcakes for the baby chicks to sit on. You could fill them with jelly, peanut butter cups, caramel, cheesecake or even more buttercream!
• Another idea would be to use different types of candy for the eyes, beak and feet. Try orange gumdrops, Starburst candies, orange fondant, or M&Ms!
• Give your chicks chocolate buttercream nests to sit on, like in these Spring Chick Cupcakes or Easter Bird’s Nest Cupcakes.