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Gorgeous and delicious and perfect for Fall and nobody needs to know how easy these Harvest Thanksgiving Cupcakes are to make.

Four Harvest Thanksgiving Cupcakes sitting on a white table in front of a pan of chocolate cupcakes.

Our Harvest Thanksgiving Cupcakes are gorgeous and delicious and perfect for Fall and nobody needs to know how easy they are to make.  Topped with our delicious Buttercream Frosting in beautiful Fall colors these cupcakes would be perfect for a Fall Bake Sale or as a Thanksgiving dessert for your guests who don’t like pie.

Ingredients You Will Need

All the ingredients you will need to make Harvest Thanksgiving Cupcakes including chocolate cupcakes, buttercream frosting, food coloring and cupcake liners.

How to Make the Cupcakes

Closeup on ten chocolate cupcakes sitting on a white table.

Step 1: Make a batch of cupcakes.  You can use a cake box mix, we have all the instructions you’ll need to make them taste just like homemade right here. Or you can make them from scratch with our yummy Homemade Chocolate Cupcakes recipe.  We used chocolate cupcakes but Vanilla Cupcakes would taste great too.

How to Make the Frosting

Closeup on a clear glass bowl filled with homemade Buttercream Frosting.

Step 2: The key to these delicious cupcakes is our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe.   It is light and creamy and buttery and super delicious! You will find the recipe and directions here.  One batch of frosting will be enough to frost 12 cupcakes.  If you used a boxed cake mix, you should have about 18 cupcakes and will need to double the frosting recipe.  Once you have the frosting made, split it into four portions.  Because the four layers of the frosting swirl are not all the same size we portioned our single batch of frosting as follows:

Red:  3/4 cup
Orange: 3/4 cups
Gold: 1/2 cup
White: 1/2 cup

How to Color the Frosting

Collage image showing the food color formulas for making red, orange, gold and white buttercream frosting.

Now it is time to tint the frosting. We like the Wilton Color Right Food Coloring.  It is concentrated and you can get a bright color without having to use too much food coloring.  Here are the formulas we used for our Thanksgiving/Fall frosting colors:

To create the three Fall shades of Harvest Red, Burnt Orange, and Gold Wilton Color Right Food coloring in the following amounts:

  • Red – 10 drops of Red and 4 drops of Crimson
  • Orange –6 drops of Orange and 2 drops of Red
  • Gold –6 drops of Yellow and 1 drop of Orange
  • White – No food coloring.

Putting It All Together

A single unfrosted cupcake sitting on a white table next to frosting decorating bags filled with red, orange, gold and white buttercream frosting.

Step 4: Load the four colors of frosting into separate decorating bags with a Wilton 1M Open Star Decorating Tip and gather up your cupcakes!

Collage image showing how to make the four color frosting swirl.

Step 5:  For each cupcake, you will make four swirls of the frosting.  The red on the bottom then orange, then gold, and finally white. With the decorating bag and the 1M tip, make one and a half circles of red frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
Step 6: Next apply another 1 1/2 circles of orange frosting but this circle should be a little smaller than the red frosting layer as shown in the picture above.
Step 7:  Repeat the process again, this time with the gold frosting.
Step 8: Finally, with the white frosting, add a fourth circle but this time finish with an upward flourish so that the swirl ends in a peak at the top.

You can watch a video of how to make a frosting swirl like this in our How to Frost Cupcakes post.

Expert Tips and FAQ’s

How far ahead of a party can you make these cupcakes?

Ideally, you should make the cupcakes the day before the party. You can store them in the refrigerator but remember to take them out a couple of hours before you are going to serve them because a cold cupcake is not a good cupcake. If you are short on time, you could make the cupcakes further ahead and freeze them until the day before the party and then defrost them and frost them the day before the party.

Do the cupcakes have to be refrigerated?

No. They will be fine left out at room temperature. Day one and two, they will taste great. On day three, the frosting will start to be hard on the outside and the cupcakes will start to get a little bit stale but they will still taste fine. After day four … the cupcakes will be stale. You can get another day or two out of them by storing them in the refrigerator.

Closeup on a Harvest Thanksgiving Cupcake sitting on a white table in front of other cupcakes and surrounded by Thanksgiving sprinkles.

Other Thanksgiving Cupcakes You Will Love

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Harvest Thanksgiving CupcakesPrint

Harvest Thanksgiving Cupcakes

Yield 18 cupcakes
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 18 minutes
Additional Time 10 minutes
Total Time 38 minutes

Gorgeous and delicious and perfect for Fall and nobody needs to know how easy these Harvest Thanksgiving Cupcakes are to make.

Ingredients

  • 1 box Chocolate Cake Mix
  • 1-2 batches of our The Best Buttercream Frosting
  • Wilton Color Right Food Coloring - Red, Crimson, Orange, Yellow
  • Wilton 1M Frosting tips and decorating bags

Instructions

  1. Make a batch of cupcakes.  You can use a cake box mix, we have all the instructions you’ll need to make them taste just like homemade right here. Or you can make them from scratch with our yummy Homemade Chocolate Cupcakes recipe.  We used chocolate cupcakes but Vanilla Cupcakes would taste great too.
  2. The key to these delicious cupcakes is our Best Buttercream Frosting recipe.   It is light and creamy and buttery and super delicious! You will find the recipe and directions here.  One batch of frosting will be enough to frost 12 cupcakes.  If you used a boxed cake mix, you should have about 18 cupcakes and will need to double the frosting recipe.  Once you have the frosting made, split it into four portions.  Because the four layers of the frosting swirl are not all the same size we portioned our single batch of frosting as follows: Red:  3/4 cup Orange: 3/4 cup Gold: 1/2 cup White: 1/2 cup.
  3. Now it is time to tint the frosting. We like the Wilton Color Right Food Coloring.  It is concentrated and you can get a bright color without having to use too much food coloring.  Here are the formulas we used for our Thanksgiving/Fall frosting colors: Red – 10 drops of Red and 4 drops of Crimson, Orange –6 drops of Orange and 2 drops of Red, Gold –6 drops of Yellow and 1 drop of Orange, White - No food coloring.
  4. Load the four colors of frosting into separate decorating bags with a Wilton 1M Open Star Decorating Tip and gather up your cupcakes!
  5. For each cupcake, you will make four swirls of the frosting.  The red on the bottom then orange, then gold, and finally white.
  6. With the decorating bag and the 1M tip, make one and a half circles of red frosting around the edge of the cupcake.
  7. Next apply another 1 1/2 circles of orange frosting but this circle should be a little smaller than the red frosting layer as shown in the picture above.
  8. Repeat the process again, this time with the gold frosting.
    Finally, with the white frosting, add a fourth circle but this time finish with an upward flourish so that the swirl ends in a peak at the top.

Did you Make this Recipe? Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @twosisterscrafting on Instagram so we can see it!

© Two Sisters Crafting
Cuisine: American / Category: Cupcakes