Friday, December 2, 2011

Thanksgiving Turkey Cake Pops

I had decided to make these for my son's class & give them a little boost for the holiday spirit. :)

As I started making them, I asked myself, 'WHY did I start them again soo soon after making some for Halloween?!?!?!?' They turned out cute and were not so difficult as the first ones I did.

I started the day before on making my sugar gum paste feathers & heads. My son & I spent some time coloring the gum paste with gel food coloring.  We were trying to match the brown to the chocolate bodies but couldn't quite get it dark enough. I used a flower cookie cutter & knife to cut out the shapes for each of the feathers.  It worked well for my 9yr old son to cut the rolled out sugar gum paste with the cookie cutter & I used the knife cut the flowers into feathers.  In very random order I 'glued' three together with clear vanilla extract on a sheet of wax paper.  This took almost 24 hours to dry, but when they did dry, they were well stuck together. I did not think it would work at first but I didn't give up.   
My partner thought they
looked huge in a picture
so I captured my hand to
show the size.
My son was helping in the beginning but it proved a little difficult for him so I had him bake a chocolate cake while I did the gluing. 

I used both Orange and Yellow for the beaks.  They were very small. As soon as I rolled the head, I stuck the beak on the head so they could dry together. My son used a edible marker to color the eyes.  After they had dried to where they wouldn't smash when I would pick them up, I used red gel food coloring to paint the red snood on the beak.

The next morning, I crumbled the cake and added 1/2 a can of chocolate buttercream icing, mixing it well.  I stuck the bowl of cake & icing mixture in the fridge for about 20 minutes for it to firm up.  I then rolled the cake mixture into balls and placed them onto a wax paper lined cookie sheet. I then poked a hole into the top of each ball for the sucker sticks.  I melted a small amount of chocolate dipping candy, suck a sucker stick into the melted candy & then placed the sucker stick into the hole on the ball of cake.

After I had all the balls and sticks made, I froze them for about 2 hours so that when I dipped the cake into chocolate, they wouldn't fall off the stick.

The chocolate melt was still a little darker than the color of my turkey heads so I added some white candy melt to it and the color came out softer. I melted the candy according to the directions on the packaging.

In assembling all the pieces together, I had my partner help me.  I dipped while she placed the feather and heads on the body.  It was easier to have the feathers laid out on wax paper & set the cake pop onto the feathers rather than holding the cake pop upright & holding the feathers and head until the chocolate candy hardened.

I went to Walmart three days before Thanksiving to look for a way to display my gaggle of turkeys & I was pleasantly surprised to see the "fall" items on sale. I purchased a scarecrow for $.50!  Also found some small plastic pumpkins to throw into the mix.
I used the same basket that I had used for the Scary Cake Pops. I purchased a tan leafy material to cover my Styrofoam block. I found some 'straw' to use & ribbon with wire in the fabric section. 

The ladies in the school office thought it was sooooo cute. The next time I went to the office they wanted to know what I was going to make for Christmas.... Snow mans???  Sorry to say tho, they will have to be okay with my Holiday Cheeseballs....

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