Simple & Easy Chocolate Pretzel Bunny Ears & Carrots Cupcake Toppers
Spring has sprung and Easter is right around the corner! Whether it’s a cute treat for your kiddo’s class, an office potluck, or an Easter dinner, you probably have been voluntold to bring a dessert somewhere – we’ve all been there! Maybe you’re lacking general baking skills or just don’t have the time for something complex. Regardless of the “why”, we’ve got the “what”! These adorable pretzel stick bunny ears and carrots are the perfect way to dress up a simple or storebought dessert and look adorable even if you pipe them like a toddler.
With only a few ingredients, you can make these in 20 minutes or less and get points for both creativity and deliciousness. Use them to top brownies, cake, cupcakes – you name it! These simple and easy pretzel chocolate bunny ears and carrot toppers take those storebought cupcakes to the next level with next to no effort. That’s a win in our books!
The recipe is very simple and is all based around chocolate wafers, also called Candy Melts if you buy the Wilton’s brand. We got ours at Bulk Barn – a Canadian bulk food store, but you can also often find them at arts and craft stores or other bulk food stores. If they don’t have orange in stock (ours didn’t – whoops!), buy yellow and a few red wafers. If you melt them together, you’ll get a beautiful pastel orange! Start with a bowl of yellow and add about 5 red wafers. You can always add more red after if you want a darker orange, but it’s easier to add more than to try to backtrack.
Make sure to pick up some piping bags! They normally cost less than 50 cents each and they’ll make piping the shapes far easier than if you try to opt for a Ziploc bag. Melt the chocolate wafers in individual bowls in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time so they don’t burn, ensuring you stir in between each interval. Make a point to stir the melts that are touching the edges of the bowl, otherwise, I can almost guarantee they’ll burn, leaving a nasty smell in your microwave and making you start over or worse, sending you to the store again! Put them into bags and pipe them onto a parchment paper lined plate or baking tray, leaving about half an inch or so of pretzel sticking out the bottom. Then pop them in the fridge for 10 minutes or until they’re completely hardened.
Don’t worry about them being all different shapes and sizes! We promise that’s part of what makes them so cute and charming. They’re so easy that they make a really fun edible craft to do with your little ones too! They’ll have fun piping the chocolate (and eating the extra pretzels) and you get to experience a low-stress, highly forgiving activity with your child.
Repeat the same steps for both the carrots and the bunny ears, microwaving the colors you need for each respective topper as you need them. The melts tend to harden quite quickly, so it’s best to microwave the orange and green, then pipe the carrots, then microwave the white and pink, then pipe the ears. Alternatively, you can microwave all four colors at the same time, put them into the piping bags, close them up with twist ties or clothespins (just to hold them shut temporarily), and then re-soften them by placing the un-snipped bags in a cup of hot water if needed!
Once they’re hardened, pop them off the tray and into the top of the cupcake or other sweet treat! Create sets of ears that are similar, unless you want particularly lop-sided bunnies. The toppers will stay hardened at room temperature but are also fine in the fridge, so choose how to store them based on the treat they’re topping. BAM! Cutest Easter treats ever. They’re ready to serve up and be enjoyed by all. Hoppy Easter!
- 1 dozen cupcakes, store-bought or homemade
- 18 pretzel sticks
- 3/4 cup white chocolate wafers
- 1/2 cup pink chocolate wafers
- 3/4 cup orange chocolate wafers (or red and yellow)
- 1/2 cup green chocolate wafers
- 4 piping bags
- Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Place pretzel sticks on the tray, leaving a few inches of space between them.
- In individual bowls, microwave each of the 4 colours of chocolate melts 20 seconds at a time, stirring in between each interval.
- Once melted, pour each color into a piping bag. To make it easier, place the bag in a tall cup with the large open end propped against the lip of the cup to hold it open while you pour the chocolate in. Snip a small hole in the tip of each bag for drizzling.
- For the carrots: Drizzle the orange melted chocolate across the pretzel in a carrot shape, going back and forth. Then drizzle the green chocolate vertically on the top of the pretzel, mimicking grass (for carrot top).
- For the bunny ears: Drizzle the white chocolate across the pretzel stick, mimicking a rabbit ear, keeping the chocolate narrow at the bottom, drizzling it wider through the middle, and narrowing it again at the top to come to a point. Repeat the pattern with the pink chocolate on top of the white, (but about half the size) to create the inner part of the ear.
- Make sure you leave at least half an inch of chocolate-less pretzel at the bottom to ensure you can stick them in the cupcakes.
- Repeat these steps until all the carrots and ears are made. Ensure you make extras, as some will inevitably break later.
- Let harden in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.
- Carefully pull the sticks off of the parchment paper and gently push onto the tops of the cupcakes before serving!
