if you have the beautiful privilege of being a canadian (like such as me), you should currently have a distended stomach bulging over your loosest pants and be fighting the urge to slip into a turkey-induced coma.
my hungry readers from abroad may be confused by this so i'll state my point plainly:
IT'S THANKSGIVING!
huzzah!
now, as i may have hinted previously in the blog, food-related holidays are my most fav. thanksgiving is no exception to this, and as per usual, the cesareos have gone all out. unfortunately, i am prohibited by law/my mother to disclose the secret recipes of the feast itself, but i can say that it was quite extensive. there may or may not have been a 35 pound turkey, 20 pounds of potatoes, a bucket of gravy, a dozen plates of side-dishes and one very mysterious ham.
clearly, we don't mess around. but even in spite of the above scrumptiousness, the most celebrated item of the day was stick-less cake pop turkeys handcrafted by your's truly.
my usual process for making cake pops is the one detailed earlier in the blog. see here: http://theresacesareo.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-cake-pops-is-cool-my-cake-pops-is.html
these original cake pops are classic. but i have come to the realization that their plainness (while practically perfect in every way - love you bb, never change xox) makes them boring and as a culinary meandererererererer it is my duty to branch out. *salutes*
prepare yourselves, hungry readers. we're getting festive.
i present you with this:
...i know, i know. it's beautiful. so inspiring. i almost changed my name to Turkesa and moved to Turks and Caicos in its honor. turns out i don't know where that is, so the immigration process proved quite difficult. anyways, wipe your tears of joy and let's get to the method behind this masterpiece.
i started by making cake pops as usual. bake a cake, crumble it, add icing, roll into balls, freeze and dip it in a coating of your choice.
the only difference with these ones is the lack of stick. the reasoning: how many turkeys do you know (since i assume that you, like me, know many personally) with lollipop sticks protruding from their backsides? in my experience, the percentage is low. also, i made my cake balls too big and they kept sliding down the stick, so there's that...
then, like god, i sculpted the features and face of my turkeys. hopefully not in my own image.
side note: by likening myself to the lord, i am not suggesting that you worship me. but if that's what you want.........
ahem. let's begin with the face.
for the beak i grabbed some orange starbursts and flattened them with a rolling pin. then i cut out some wee triangles and made 'em curved and beaky.
in much the same way, i fashioned each of my turkeys a wattle....
wattle: (n) the strange red apparatus that hangs from below a turkey's beak. suggested by theorists to be an ornament that is key to the attraction of sexy turkey-ladiesssss. also commonly referred to as the turkey's necktie. maybe just by me.
...using a pie crust cutter.
for eyeballs, i used micromints with a pupil drawn by a food colouring marker.
for the head itself, i used chocolate almonds.
then, using melted chocolate for glue (a method that i think should be adopted by elementary schools everywhere) i combined the above features to make a face. like a plastic surgeon. a turkey plastic surgeon. which is a real career path, no matter what my guidance counselor and psychiatrist say...
please note: the feeling of having your soul peered into by this turkey head was not intentional. to avoid this and be able to sleep at night without visions of this face flashing before my eyes, i should have made the pupils more googly by placing them anywhere but the dead center of the mint.
next, i attached the turkey head to the cake ball with some more melted chocolate.
after that, i used sour patch kids to simulate wings and tail feathers. once again, attached with melted chocolate. you could also use candy corn or actual feathers. or not actual feathers.
finally, i attached some pretzel sticks as legs - which, admittedly, aren't a perfect representation of turkey legs because they lack feet and are not as delicious when slathered with gravy...
i then repeated this about 20 times to create a turkey army.
during this process there may or may not have been several references to "my minions" and a few exclamations telling them to "going forth to do my delicious bidding."
moving along... my personal favourite was this guy in the front:
a very accurate representation of a turkey, if i do say so myself. the ones i know are deranged with a menacing head-tilt.
i then served these for dessert post-actual turkey feast.
those that ate them enjoyed them thoroughly, though it took a great deal of persuasion to have people bite into them.
amid the "mmmmmm"s and lip licking, the collective cry was "it's too cute to eat!"
fear not, the cake turkeys, like falling in love with darren criss during one of his seranades, could not be resisted. yes, i did just draw a comparison between cake and darren criss. what can i say - they both make me happy ;)
all in all, a delicious dessert that proved a worthy competitor to the traditional thanksgiving puddings (as my friend harry would say) of pumpkin and apple pie.
while these turkeys are quite obviously a holiday-specific creation, they would be equally delicious on the 364 days of the year that are not thanksgiving. though you may get a few sideways glances should you decide to recreate and eat them on one of these days, i assure you the taste will comfort you in your ostracism.
in conclusion, be thankful, as i am, to the pilgrims and native peoples of the americas that enabled the creation of this glutinous holiday and by extension these delicious cake turkeys.
now, i think the time is right for yet another turkey sandwich followed by a nap.
thanks for reading :)
