Happy Thanksgiving!

This is our first Thanksgiving as a married couple. I say, the only thing different this year is that we had our own potluck assignment.

Tita Inday: For the Orlinas, you guys bring the cake.
Us: What? Oh, okay.

We used to hide under the broad potlucking umbrella provided by my parents. Now that we're married, everybody expects that we should be our own separate unit. Hrmph.

Anyhoo, true to my frustrated-Martha-Stewart form, I baked cupcakes from scratch, and decorated them to look like turkeys. Mark fondly calls this trait of mine as "just a tad bit obsessed."

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Here are the details of my Turkey-looking Cupcakes:

For the cupcakes, I decided to use butternut squash. My sister's grandma-in-law gave us a bagful of large butternut squash that they grow organically in their little farm.

here's the bastos-looking butternut squash

Because Botsie trusts Jamie Oliver so much, I decided to follow his recipe found here. It's a muffin recipe...but hey, muffin=cupcake in my dictionary. I was so surprised at the simplicity of his recipe that I doubted it at first. I have serious misgivings when a baking recipe only asks me to use my food processor and not my KitchenAid stand-alone mixer. This is baking snobbery as taught to me by The Martha. However, Jamie Oliver, as I found out, is awesome! The cupcakes tasted like carrot cake, was moist, and not cloyingly sweet.

They came out perfectly. Kudos to Jamie Oliver!

I didn't use JO's frosting. Instead, I used a cream cheese frosting recipe by Sprinkles Cupcakes. I modified it because the original recipe was super duper tooth-achingly sweet. I had to tone down the sugar because I have a bunch of diabetic relatives and I easily get inflamed tonsils myself. Here's the Sprinkles recipe:

8oz cold cream cheese
1 stick unsalted butter, firm but not cold
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar (original recipe called for 3 3/4 cups)
1/2 tsp vanilla

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat the cream cheese, butter and salt on medium-low speed until smooth and creamy, 2-3 minutes. Reduce the speed to low, gradually add the confectioners' sugar and beat until incorporated. Add the vanilla and beat just until incorporated. Do not overmix or the frosting will incorporate too much air; it should be creamy and dense like ice cream. Add milk, 1 tsp at a time, if frosting does not have a spreadable consistency.

For the Turkey decoration, I turned to The Martha for guidance. Click here for a complete how-to.

Can you spot the albino turkey head?

I couldn't find mini fish gummies to use for the beak and tail,
so I used candy corn instead. Any candy that has a triangular shape
will work, I guess.

And for the final display....tadaaaaaa!

Did I make The Martha proud?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!