Easy Thanksgiving Harvest Cupcakes

Thanksgiving is almost here {can you believe it?}, so naturally thoughts of delicious food dances through our heads. If you are looking for a simple yet festive and easy to serve dessert to display on the Thanksgiving dessert table this year, you will love these Easy Thanksgiving Harvest Cupcakes!

Not only are these cupcakes beautiful to look at, they are very easy to make. Much like any other simple cupcakes you would make from a box mix, these are made the same way.  The beauty of these cupcakes is that it looks like they were very labor intensive to make…but they were not at all! 

Candy Corn, which were previously only available in traditional orange, white and yellow colors, can now be found in fun new harvest/fall colors! This opens up a whole new world of ideas for desserts for Fall. But back to these festive Thanksgiving cupcakes!

How many cupcakes does a box of cake mix make?

A boxed cake mix makes 24 regular sized cupcakes, 60 mini cupcakes, or 12 jumbo cupcakes.

How do you make Harvest themed cupcakes?

To make cupcakes have that fall, autumn, harvest or Thanksgiving look, try coloring the frosting OR using decorations on top with colors like burnt orange, deep red, medium and dark yellow, and light, medium and dark browns. If you plan on using heavily colored decorations, it’s probably a good idea to keep the frosting a lighter tone of one of the colors you’ll be using.

Easy Thanksgiving cupcakes:

Ingredients:

Box of Yellow Cake mix (or White, Chocolate, or any flavor you prefer)
Container of frosting (Use vanilla or cream cheese if you will want to color it orange, yellow, etc.) but chocolate is fine if you don’t want to color it and you want brown as your base color under the candy corn (which would actually look awesome!).
3 Bags of Autumn/Harvest mix Candy Corn – depending on how many cupcakes you are making {you’ve have to allow for some “dud” candy corn pieces!}

What are the best baking pans for making cupcakes?

It depends on the size you want to make and how many people you want to feed! If you want to serve a lot of people, then you would want to use two pans with 12 regular size cups. Pans also come in 6 regular cup sizes, but since cake mixes typically make 24 cupcakes, it would usually be simpler to buy the larger ones. If you have a small oven, however, it might make more sense to buy the 6 cup size.

Directions:

Make cupcakes as you normally would.

Before frosting the cupcakes, pick out the best candy corn pieces. You’ll want enough matching ones
Frost cupcakes with frosting color of choice {frosting layer should be a bit thinner than normal, but thick enough to hold the candy corn in place}. If frosting is too thick, it gets pushed up between the candy corn.

Start with the first candy corn with the wide edge just slightly past the edge of the cupcake. Gently push it into the frosting. Line up the second candy corn with the first one, right next to it and push it in the same way. Continue with the rest of the candy corn pieces, checking along the way to make sure they are lined up evenly. You may need to replace a piece or two if they don’t match up.

Fill the center with sprinkles or DIY Colored Sugared Pearls in the color of your choosing!

We would really love it if you would share these Easy Thanksgiving Harvest Cupcakes on your social channels – thank you!

If you like easy cupcake recipes for your holiday baking, then you’ll love making our darling Easter Bunny Cupcakes to adorn your Easter dessert table!