Sweet Little Piglet Cupcake Recipe

There are two schools of thought when it comes to eating a cupcake: Open wide and take a big bite (which usually results in icing on your nose) or tear off the bottom half and eat your treat in two stages. No matter which strategy you employ, there’s no denying that these Piglet cupcakes would make a sweet Valentine’s Day treat for both kids and adults! This is a variation and inspired by this Disney recipe.

For this recipe, any cupcakes will do but I got adventurous and made carrot & pineapple cupcakes with cream cheese icing. That’s right, scratch-made cupcakes and scratch-made icing. I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to save some time by making cupcakes from a box and buying your icing already made, but these cupcakes are definitely worth the extra effort!

To decorate your piglet cupcakes, you’ll need some icing (dyed pink with a few drops of red food coloring), Swedish Fish (for the ears), candy hearts (for the nose), and black icing or gel (for the eyes and mouth).

After your cupcakes are cooked and cooled, you’ll need to trim a little cake off the top edges to create the oblong shape of piglet’s head (sort of like an egg). If you’ve got a sharp knife, you can use that, but I used an X-acto knife from my craft supplies.

Once you’ve got the cupcakes trimmed to perfection, it’s time to ice them! The icing should be at least the thickness of a candy heart and should be as smooth as possible.

It’s finally time to decorate Piglet’s face. One upside down candy heart in the middle of the cupcake will give our cute little piggy a nose. My bag of candy hearts didn’t include any red ones (the nose color should match the Swedish Fish ears), so I used some red food coloring to dye some pink hearts.

When it comes to the ears, here’s a valuable trick: Insert a butter knife into the two places in the cupcake where you want to insert the fish (tail first). Doing that will make it a lot easier to insert the fish!

After the ears and nose are in place, paint on the mouth, eyes and eyebrows with the black gel or icing. If your icing tube has a tiny enough hole on the end, you can squeeze the icing directly onto the cupcake. If not, feel free to squeeze some black icing onto a plate and apply it to the cupcake with a toothpick.

If you’re making these cupcakes for a party or “to go,” your can make them portable by putting each cupcake in a short clear plastic cup. Next, wrap each cup up in some cellophane treat bags (I found mine at Target in the gift wrapping aisle) and tie it off with some ribbon.

Warning: Depending upon the size of your cup, your piglet ears may or may not fit while attached to the cupcake. If that’s the case, you might consider dropping the Swedish Fish into the cup along side the cupcake and instructing recipients to get in on the Piglet-decorating fun by adding the ears themselves.

Have you grabbed my freezer meal plans, yet? I might be biased but I think they are pretty amazing! They have saved our dinner hour for years now. Check them out!