Thanksgiving is right around the corner, which means it’s time to start planning the menu! While the centerpiece is obviously the turkey, this year take your turkey to the next level by making a cake that looks just like one! A turkey cake is sure to delight and wow your guests.
Why Make a Turkey Cake?
A cake shaped and decorated to resemble a plump turkey is a fun humorous and creative alternative to traditional Thanksgiving desserts like pumpkin and apple pie. It shows off your baking and decorating skills in a playful way. Both kids and adults will get a kick out of slicing into this turkey cake and devouring it!
The element of surprise and whimsy makes this the perfect festive dessert for a holiday centered around overindulging. Just be prepared for guests to take out their phones and snap some pics of your masterpiece before digging in!
How to Make a Turkey Cake
While a decorative turkey cake may seem difficult, it’s actually quite easy with strategic baking techniques and decorating skills.
Here’s an overview of how to make a turkey cake:
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Bake two round cakes for the body and a cupcake or loaf cake for the head.
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Once cooled, stack the cakes and frost to form the turkey body shape. The domed top of the round cake creates the round turkey shape.
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Frost the entire turkey and use frosting to make the wings, tail, feathers, head, wattle, legs, and feet.
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Decorate with candy corn for the beak and feet, chocolate chips or nuts for the eyes, and coconut for the feathers.
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Add other decorations like cranberries for the wattle red licorice for the comb etc. The possibilities are endless!
Helpful Tips and Tricks
When crafting a turkey cake, here are some useful tips and tricks for plump, round, turkey-like results:
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Draw a turkey body template on paper to properly size the cakes and place decorations.
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Use a serrated knife to carve and shape stacked cakes into an oval shape.
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Place the cake head at an angle to create the signature tilted turkey head
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Use frosting to make distinctive feathers, especially large tail feathers.
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Include key features like the wattle, comb, and snood.
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Use brown frosting for feathers to mimic real turkey plumage.
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Refrigerate the cake 30-60 minutes after decorating so frosting sets up nicely.
Show Off Your Decorating Skills
One of the best parts of crafting a turkey cake is highlighting your decorating abilities. Go simple with just frosting feathers or get creative with hand-sculpted fondant features, food color paint details, etc. Use any techniques you’re comfortable with – the results will be amazing no matter what!
Choose Your Favorite Cake and Frosting Flavors
The great thing about a turkey cake is customizing the flavors, like:
Cake flavors: spice, pumpkin, carrot, red velvet, chocolate, vanilla, marble, lemon, banana
Frosting flavors: brown sugar cinnamon, maple, pumpkin spice, salted caramel, peanut butter, peppermint
Or opt for a completely iced cake with ganache, buttercream, or cream cheese.
Make It a Family Activity
Crafting a turkey cake can be a fun family activity, especially with kids. Give them simple tasks like spreading frosting, placing candy decorations, and drawing the turkey template. Then everyone can join in decorating and feel proud when it’s the centerpiece!
Find Inspiration Online
For more inspiration, look online for amazing tutorials, photos, and videos. Check out YouTube for step-by-step video tutorials. The Tablespoon website also has a great photo of a finished turkey cake. Use these to spark creativity and ensure your turkey cake looks impressive.
Present Your Turkey Cake
Once decorated, present your turkey cake properly so all your hard work shines:
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Display on a cake stand or platter to elevate it.
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Surround with fall garnishes like cranberries, maple leaves, mini pumpkins.
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Use a wood slice or cake board to transfer to the platter or table.
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Insert feathers or a turkey figurine into the top.
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Scatter chocolate leaves or acorns around the base.
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Tie a simple ribbon around the cake stand for festive flair.
However you choose to present it, your decorative turkey cake will wow everyone!
Dig Into This Delicious Dessert
The fun doesn’t stop when the turkey cake comes out of the oven. The best part is getting to dig into this delicious dessert! Provide guests with a knife to slice into the turkey cake and serve it up. Make sure to get photos of everyone enjoying a slice of your marvelous creation. Then sit back and enjoy the fruits of your baking labor! A turkey cake truly makes for an iconic and decadent Thanksgiving dessert. Once people get a taste, it may just become a new family tradition.
So what are you waiting for? Roll up your sleeves, preheat that oven, and get baking a show-stopping turkey cake this Thanksgiving! Your guests will be delighted when you present this fun, creative, and delicious version of the traditional centerpiece turkey.
Serve raw turkey (cake!) this Thanksgiving
This hyper realistic cake looks like a raw turkey with its plucked ‘skin’ and dripping in ‘juices’ it is going to create quite a reaction at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
I originally created this design for my family for Christmas after I had made one too many beautiful wedding cakes and needed a change. He has international fans now and has been copied all over the world – so try it yourself and let me know the reaction you get.
POINTS BEFORE WE START
- This tutorial is for those with some previous experience of baking and covering cakes but if you’re a beginner with a give-it-a-go attitude you should have some fun too.
- These quantities make a cake roughly 32cm (13”) long by 22cm (9”) wide and 22cms (9”) high which fits the average turkey roasting tray.
- Scale the template up or down to your needs and alter the quantities to suit.
- When making a carved cake always use a sponge with decently strong, even texture – (see the recipes I use here)
- A large roasting tin makes a good pan for baking your sheet cakes in.
- Print out a really good quality photograph of a raw turkey taken from the side and another one taken from the front and back if you want to do a really good job – you can keep using these references alongside my pictures and instructions
- Cake board or work board for building your cake on – at least as big as size of your final cake
- Roasting tin or disposable foil turkey tray – remember this is ‘raw’ so it wouldn’t be seen on a fancy serving plate
- Rolling pin
- Sharp paring knife
- Serrated bread knife for carving
- Palette knife for applying buttercream/frosting
- Dresden tool or blunt knife for tooling details
- A wooden skewer
- Little piece of baker’s string for tying legs together
| Materials required | Quantities |
| Buttercream / Frosting | 1.5 kg / 3.3lb (1 butter: 2 icing sugar/powdered sugar)
Dye it red using paste colours (Optional: take a small quantity of the red, add blue dye to give purple for added yuk factor later) |
| Sponge cake | 3 x sheets of cake each 3cm deep and the size of the roasting tin that you are serving your final cake in – Just bake your cakes in the same tin you will serve it in and you’ll be sure it fits. I have a recipe suggestion here
Brush the cooled sheet cakes with syrup before starting to stack them (but don’t drown them) |
| Syrup | 140g/5oz sugar dissolved in 225ml/1 cup water or flavoured to suit your cake |
| Marzipan | 1.5kg/3.3lb (use white and not golden marzipan) |
| Rice Krispies treats or white modelling chocolate | 60g/2oz |
- Bake all cakes the day before, cool, wrap and leave to rest 24hrs before stacking and carving
- Print out the templates to the size you want – (make sure the FIRST LAYER template fits into the dish you intend to serve it on with a good centimeter space all around).
- Copy the templates onto greaseproof paper and cut them out.
Layering
- Place the FIRST LAYER template centrally on first sheet cake and cut around it.
- Do the same with SECOND LAYER & THIRD LAYER templates on your second sheet of cake. Wrap any offcuts as they will be used later.
- Place your FIRST LAYER onto your cake board and add a layer of frosting/buttercream to top surface.
- Position SECOND LAYER and THIRD LAYERs with buttercream in between.
- Cut out two BREAST FILLETS from the left-overs and position them with frosting/buttercream.
- Add a piece of off cut in between the two breast fillets to slope downward to the front of breast-bone.
- Using your serrated knife undercut the edge all the way around the cake. Now carve the stacked cakes to form the turkey body using these pictures and your print outs as a references
- This space at the front of layer 2 has been filled out with some cake leftovers.
- Crumb coat your cake with any colour buttercream and if you have space put it in the freezer for 30 mins to firm up.
- Using your third sheet of cake cut out two each of templates LEG No 1, LEG No2 and WING
- Shape your two wing sections (here in blue so that you can see them more clearly) and stick to the cake with frosting/buttercream If you need things to firm up at any stage then put the cake in the freezer for 10 mins (do not fully freeze it).
- Next stick both LEG No1s to the sides of the cake with frosting/buttercream.
- Fix both LEG No2s to the LEG No 1s with frosting/buttercream.
- Carve the upper legs to shape and crumb coat them
- Make two foreleg bones out of the crispy treats or white modelling chocolate using template LEG No 3 as a guide. Squish the treats together tightly to shape them and freeze for 15 mins to firm them once you have the right shape.
- Add these forelegs to the bird and crumb coat with with buttercream frosting
- Give the whole bird a careful layer of buttercream in red with odd patches here and there in purple or blue to make it look really raw later on – look at your real life references to see where the blue bits are.
- Roll out a very thin sausage of marzipan and snip it into teeny tiny pieces of an even size then roll them into balls
- Push these balls into the surface of your buttercream in rows around the body look at your real life pictures for an accurate placement. Your bird should now look utterly ridiculous.
- Cover your cake in one piece with thinly rolled marzipan. There is no denying that this bit is tricky but a marzipan turkey is a wonderfully forgiving bird as any rips or holes can be filled and made to look like realistic ripples, stretched skin and lumps.
- Below is an example of me filling a rip around the leg with a sausage of rolled marzipan and smoothing it in with my warm hand and a rounded tool. It sticks to itself nicely without need of glue or frosting.
- The marzipan ripped around the bird’s cavity when covering so I just took an offcut of the rolled out marzipan, placed it over the ripped area and smoothed the joins together