I saw some adorable chicks on a baking blog recently and decided to recreate them for Easter. The originals were made with marzipan, but I’m obviously not fancy enough to have any marzipan so I used Starbursts. I used a similar technique as I did for the football cupcakes a few months back – a good amount of microwaving and some moderate finger burns.

I started off by microwaving a few yellow and orange candies at a time. I found that heating them up on medium power for 10 seconds, flipping the candies over and then microwaving for 5 more seconds worked best for me. Anything more and you’re pretty much dealing with lava.

Once the candies are soft but not a burn risk, grab one of the yellow ones and knead it a little to lose the original shape.

Roll it around between your palms until you are left with a ball and then back and forth a few times to make an egg shape.

Then flatten the bottom a little so that it will stand on its own. This will be the body of the chick. I made a few small chicks using 1 yellow Starburst and a few larger ones using 2 Starbursts.

Next up, grab the orange candy that you heated up and break it in half.

Take one of the halves and roll it into a ball

and then squish it gently between your palm and a hard surface to flatten it into a disc. This will eventually become the feet.

The next step is to make the wings for the chick. Break off a very small piece of a yellow candy

and roll it back and forth between your palms to make a little teardrop shape.

Then gently flatten it out with the blade of a knife. Lather, rinse, repeat for as many wings as you need.

By now the orange discs should have hardened, so its time to make the feet. Using a sharp knife, make a cut to the center of the disc

and then make another one so that you’re left with a triangular cutout.

Don’t eat that little piece though, that’s the beak! Cut a little off of the rounded end so that it will be a better fit against the body of the chick. You can eat that little piece.

Okay, now we’ve got all of the parts of the chick.

Have a glass of water handy, that’s what you’ll be using as an “adhesive.”

Grab one of the bodies and use a toothpick to make little eyes.

Then dip the flat end of one of the beaks in water and press it gently right underneath the eyes. Hold it there for a few seconds to make sure it sticks.

As I write this, I am realizing that I put that beak on the wrong way. Beaks don’t open sideways, dummy.

Use the same method to attach a wing on one side

and then the other.

note: there were some peeps (HA!) at Easter dinner who thought that the wings were ears – even though chicks don’t have floppy ears – so you might want to make your chick a little taller and put the wings on a little lower. Or just have a floppy-eared chick like I did.

Then dip just the very bottom of the chick into water and press it down onto a set of feet and voila! An adorable little chickadee.

An adorable flock of chickadees!

My mom had found some egg-shaped cupcake tins so I used those to bake little vehicles for the chicks. 

These come with 24 little tins and you just pour the batter into them as you normally would and then place them on a baking sheet that has edges so that they don’t slide all over the place. Pretty neat!

To answer your question, yes, those are Funfetti cupcakes. I kind of used up all of my energy on the chicks and phoned it in on the actual cupcakes. Whatever, the chicks are the real stars of the show anyways.

I also tried my hand at Cheesecake in a Jar, and while they looked cute (heck, you can put dirt in a mason jar and it will look cute. Not that these tasted like dirt, but you know what I mean) I have to work on the recipe a little before I share it with you kind folks.

Portable dessert? Don’t mind if I do!