While pie may be the traditional dessert for Thanksgiving, there are certain folks among us that do not care for pie (ahem, all of my children & Uncle). Typically Nana volunteers to bring a yellow (or Funfetti if she's feeling cray) layer cake simply adorned with Better Crocker vanilla frosting and a few sprinkles. And all the cake eaters are perfectly happy.
This year however I asked Nana if she could please bring a selection of cheeses and crackers so that I could make the cake. It's hard to be creative with cheese and crackers (although I did try with last year's Turkey Cheese Ball...). A cake, on the other hand, presents endless opportunities.
My first stop for Thanksgiving cake inspiration was...Pinterest! Duh.
There I found these turkey cakes and settled on the direction I wanted to take...
Here's how my turkey cake was born:
1. Bake an entire box of yellow cake mix in a 2 quart Pampered Chef glass bowl
2. Mix up a chocolate cake mix and make cupcakes
3. Arrange said shapes into the shape of a turkey. Use whatever large platter you have, make it festive with paper doilies.
4. Frost the turkey body with tinted buttercream. Make it fancy with frosting dots.
5. Using powerful food coloring (or use regular food coloring and skip the complaints about the aftertaste of the frosting from the peanut gallery), tint your homemade buttercream into 3 separate colors for feathers.
6. Frost the yellow "feathers" (and by feathers I mean cupcakes)
7. Frost the orange feathers
8. Frost the red feathers
9. Retreat to craft room and cut out turkey head from cardstock. Cut out and glue on eyes, 3-D beak, gobble, and Pilgrim-like hat.
10. Glitter the buckle of the Pilgrim hat.
11. Use frosting to adhere paper turkey head to cake turkey body
12. Take pictures! With evidence on Instagram, it's like it never happened ;-)
13. Before allowing any part of the turkey cake to be eaten, insist that all guests view the turkey cake and are duly impressed.
14. Call it a masterpiece and allow it to be destroyed enjoyed!
Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving dessert!
P.S. We also had pie. And ice cream sundaes.
