Spring Chick Cupcakes

🧾 What You’ll Need

Ingredients

These cupcakes require mostly baking basics, with a few ready-made treats thrown in. Here’s a few tips about ingredients and substitutions: (Links are affiliate links and I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.)

• Unsalted butter: Using butter instead of oil gives the cupcakes more flavor, makes them less prone to a greasy texture, and also makes them sturdy enough to hold decorations on top. I always recommend unsalted butter, but if salted is what you have, omit the salt from the recipe to compensate.
• Eggs: Use large eggs, and for the best results, have them at room temperature before beginning. Either let them sit out for 20-30 minutes, or submerge them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes to warm them up quickly.
• Sour cream: Adding sour cream to the batter makes them extra-soft and tender, and I love the very subtle tang it gives to them. Make sure your sour cream is at room temperature so everything blends together nicely.
• Powdered sugar:It may seem strange, but I am very picky about my powdered sugar. Some brands have too much corn starch, or are too coarse, leading to a rough, gritty texture in frosting. This is my powdered sugar of choice! It’s made from cane sugar instead of beet sugar, and produces smooth, consistent results.
• Unsweetened chocolate: The buttercream uses unsweetened chocolate to give it a deep, rich chocolate flavor. If you don’t have unsweetened, you can use a bittersweet chocolate instead, your frosting will just be a little sweeter.
• Twinkies: the chick’s bodies are built around Twinkies snack cakes. You can swap in other snack cakes, or use a mini cupcake or muffin instead. The important thing is to find something that’s the right size for your chick base.
• Lindt chocolate truffles: We’re using Lindt white chocolate truffles for the chick’s head. Other round truffles or chocolates are a good choice as well.
• Orange Starbursts: Orange starburst candies are used to make the chick’s beaks.
• Candy eyeballs: I used colored rainbow chips for the eyes, but small candy eyeballs are another good choice.
• Yellow gel food coloring:I used Americolor Lemon Yellow Gel Food Coloring. I recommend gel food coloring because it’s more concentrated, so you have to use less to get bright, vibrant colors.

Equipment

You’ll only need a few cupcake decorating tools to make these adorable cupcakes. (Links are affiliate links and I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.)

• Mixer: You will need some kind of mixer to make the cake batter and frosting. Either a stand mixer or hand mixer will work fine.
• Piping bags: I like these disposable piping bags (I wash them and re-use them to reduce waste!). You’ll also need couplers to keep the tips and the bags securely fastened.
• Piping tips: I recommend using small star tip #18 and a multi opening grass tip to create the look of these chick cupcakes.
• Cupcake pan and wrappers: If you don’t already have a cupcake baking pan at home, I recommend this Faberware non-stick cupcake pan. It’ll make cleanup less of a headache – especially if you use some springy Easter cupcake wrappers as well.

📋 Instructions

Here’s an overview of how to decorate these cute chick cupcakes! Full instructions are included in the recipe card down below.