Candy Corn Cupcakes
These simple vanilla cupcakes can easily be dressed up to resemble the layers of candy corn goodness, perfect for Halloween!
Ever since I started to blog full-time, I feel like I’ve gone a bit crazy. I’m at 2-3 grocery stores on a daily basis to find that perfect, ripe avocado, and now I’ve gotten into the habit of personally holding the avocados in my hand instead of throwing them into the shopping cart. You know I can’t have it bruised for the photos. And if I can’t find a certain ingredient, I’ll take extreme measures, like using the tortilla strips from a salad kit for my chicken tortilla soup.
But I might have done the craziest thing ever with these cupcakes here. See, I couldn’t find orange and yellow sprinkles so I took my stash of colored sprinkles and a tweezer to individually pick out the orange and yellow ones. But that’s not the end. I then strategically put each of these individual sprinkles on the frosting here. I figured, if I was crazy enough to pick each of them out, I might as well go all the way, right?
But aside from my neuroticness, let me tell you how fun these cupcakes are. It’s a simple vanilla based cupcake because well, I actually don’t really like candy corn, but with a little bit of food coloring, you could have a cute, orange and yellow layered cupcake so perfect for Halloween! Best of all, even non-candy corn lovers will go crazy over these!
Candy Corn Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
- ¾ cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup milk
- Yellow food coloring
- Red food coloring
- Yellow nonpareils, for garnish
- Orange nonpareils, for garnish
- Candy corn, for garnish
For the vanilla buttercream frosting
- 1 cup 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup standard muffin tin with paper liners; set aside.
- In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
- In bowl of an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Beat in egg, one at a time, until well combined. Beat in vanilla just until incorporated. With mixer on low speed, add dry ingredients and milk alternately in 3 parts, beginning and ending with dry ingredients, beating just until incorporated.
- Divide batter in half; tint one batch yellow with yellow food coloring and tint second batch orange by combining yellow and red food coloring.
- Scoop a spoonful of yellow batter evenly into the muffin tray. Top with orange batter to completely cover yellow batter. Place into oven and bake for 15-18 minutes, or until a tester inserted in center comes out clean.
- Remove from oven and cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.
- In bowl of an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter and confectioners’ sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, approximately 1-2 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add milk and vanilla, beating just until incorporated. Increase speed to medium high and beat until frosting is light and fluffy, approximately 1-2 minutes.
- Use a small offset spatula or a pastry bag fitted with a decorative tip to frost cupcakes, garnished with nonpareils and candy corn, if desired.
Did you make this recipe?
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The recipe made 8 overloaded cupcakes for me. Should the recipe actually have said 12?
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Cracking up about the handheld avocado. I mean, I’ve been known to drive to another store because whatever fruit/vegetable I needed at the first one wasn’t pretty enough… But I’m sure I’ll be approaching those levels of extreme!
These are gorgeous cupcakes–I’d say it was worth the time spent!
oh they are so cute and festive!
These are so lovely. And your strategic-sprinkle-placement certain paid off. The picture look absolutely perfect and I feel like I can taste the cupcakes just by looking at the screen. YUM!
I’m extremely impressed with your writing skills as well
as with the layout on your weblog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself?
Anyway keep up the nice quality writing, it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one nowadays.
So cute. I am a huge candy corn lover so these have my name written all over them. My friends will bring me big bags of candy corn when they want to get in good with me 🙂 I totally understand your blogging dilemmas, know one really knows what we go through 🙂
I don’t think these could be any more perfect! PINNED!
Such pretty and perfect cupcakes! They look like they were totally worth all the tweezer-action. Gorgeous! 🙂
Ha ha – I have totally picked out certain colors of sprinkles from the container before, but I have never used tweezers to place them on my treats. That is funny – well they look PERFECT!
I saw your first gorgeous cupcake photo and thought ‘how did she get the sprinkles so perfect – I bet she put them on’. I started reading and indeed you did – it totally paid off these look amazing! I totally get the grocery shopping thing – sometimes it’s everyday and they never have what you’re after 🙂
These are SO cute, and absolutely perfect for Halloween! Love them. Pinned 🙂
First, yay for you being a full time blogger. And Second, how cute are these?
Chung-Ah,
I love it! Totally understand and you are not alone with the neurotic-ness. . I was wondering how these cupcakes looked so perfectly decorated. 🙂 They are so PERECT and pretty! I love that you used tweezers. . it was so worth it. These are just beautiful! 🙂
I want to face dive into these cupcakes!!
Wow the attention to detail is fantastic and the effort worthwhile they look delicious!! Not sure I would have the patience though!!
These are simply gorgeous ! This may be a dumb question, but I would like to know the size of tip that you used to do the frosting. I have seen similar desserts but never know the tip sizes or how they are used. Perhaps a tutorial sometime ? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Denise
I used an 807 tip to decorate these cupcakes. Hope that helps!
Beautiful! And loving the bit with the tweezers. 🙂
OMG you are neurotic. But a genius cause these are gorgeous!!!!
I do even own a big blog but I do that same thing! I need to find the perfect veggies and pantry staples. maybe I just love food to much!
These are too cute. Love the little dots of orange and yellow