These delicious turkey conecakes are the perfect addition to your fall and Thanksgiving celebrations. They’re also a great activity to do with the kids in the kitchen.

Disclosure: This post has been compensated in connection with my appointment as ‘Klutz Crew’ Brand Ambassador.

Each year I try to make a new, and wonderful Autumn or Thanksgiving themed cupcake.  There’s been these turkey cupcakes, autumn leaf cupcakes, these colorful turkey cupcakes, and these adorable Pilgrim cupcakes.

This year as I was flicking through the Kid’s Cooking: A Very Slightly Messy Manual looking for fun recipes to make with the kids I came across Frosted Chocolate Conecakes. And the lightbulb lit up.

I’ve never made conecakes before. Sure I’ve made cupcakes in the shape of cones, but never made cupcakes inside cones, although I have seen it done and they look like so much fun.

Aren’t they just adorable?

My daughter loved helping me with these. While I heated the chocolate mixture on the stove, she took care of the dry ingredients and then the blending. Then a little teamwork (and taste-testing of candy) took care of the decorating which was really easy to do.

Here is how to make the conecakes. This recipe is from Klutz Kids Cooking.

Frosted Chocolate Conecakes

Ingredients:

• 10 ice-cream cones (flat bottoms) – I actually found that waffle bowls worked great, but you may not need quite as many of these as they are a bit larger than the regular cones.
• 1 cup all-purpose flour – I used white wheat flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla

In addition to the above ingredients which cover what you need to make the basic Frosted Chocolate Conecakes in the book, here is what you will need to turn these into adorable turkeys.

• Chocolate icing
• Fish candies in a variety of colors
• Toothpicks
• Hershey’s Simple Pleasures – or alternative round chocolate candy such as Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, or even small round chocolate cookies.
• Candy eyeballs
• Wilton sparkle gel – yellow and red

To make:

1.  Preheat your oven to 350F. In the mixing bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.

Note: Marisol absolutely LOVED that the Kids Cooking book came with a set of measuring spoons, now she has a set of her very own.

2. In the saucepan, mix together butter (or margarine), water and cocoa powder.  Stir all the time.  When the butter is completely melted, remove from heat and combine with the flour mixture in the bowl.

3. Use a big spoon and mix till everything is well blended.

4. Add the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla, then beat again for another minute or two. Note: The mixing by hand was a little tough for her so we broke out the beater.

5. Put the ice cream cones into a muffin tin, or a big baking pan (we used a muffin tin). Pour the cake mixture into the ice cream cones. Fill to about an inch from the top. Bake them right away so the cones don’t get soggy.

Once the cupcakes are cooled you can started decorating. 

1. Begin by topping each conecake with chocolate icing.
2. Place a round candy on top for the face. 
3. Insert a skewer into each of the fish candies and place them around the back side of the conecake like feathers.  
4. Put a little icing on the back of the candy eyballs and attach them to the candy face.
5. Using the yellow and red sparkle gel pipe on a beak and wattle.

Because I used round waffle cups instead of flat-bottom cones, I placed my turkey conecakes into silicone baking cups to keep them upright for serving.