Wordless Wednesday: Save A Turkey... Eat More Cupcakes!

A new look for an "old" tradition...

I didn't have the supplies on hand to make our regular rafter of turkeys, so I improvised. I mixed up a white cake mix, and added about 2 teaspoons of ground cardamom and 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and baked them in brown cupcake liners. Then, I whipped up a batch of buttercream, reserved some white and added cocoa powder to the rest (and some extra-fine ground cardamom).
Then, I dug around in the cupboards. I had some Anna's ginger cookies — perfect for the tails, and these great "ghost shaped" Halloween Jet Puff marshmallows (orange, white and brown in the bag), so I used two brown ghosts for the turkeys wings and cut an orange triangle of marshmallow for the beak. The wattle was a dried cranberry, and I piped white on for the eyes, and green star sprinkles (sideways) for the pupils of the eyes. They were a hit with the kiddos and the grandparents! And, delicious too!!

A Rafter of Turkeys

Did you know that a group of turkeys is called a rafter? That's nearly as good as a "smack" of jellyfish. The Fab Four did great things with their rafter of beautiful birds today. I think they're so charming (the turkeys) because the little charmers themselves made them.
I had the kids use child safety scissors to cut the Stretch Island Fruit Leather (it's thick and can be poked right into the frosted cupcake), then they frosted, arranged feathers and chose wattle and eye color for their birds. The wattles are red-candy coated chocolate covered sunflower seeds.

E was the first one finished — decorating (his is in the top right corner of pic) and eating. Solomon and Madeline's are the two in the vertical pic on the left, and Mad saved hers until we got back from the playground. G's turkey is the green-eyed beauty in the bottom center, and Solomon is pictured (enjoying his treat) with my demo-bird. Ro made one too, but I was too busy savoring my Toffee Turkey Cupcake to snap a snap. They were tasty and fun!

Flashback: Last year, I did the prep for them... cut out tail feathers from fruit leather and waddles, etc. And, apparently, they rounded out the afternoon with a viewing of The Backyardigans.

Little Turkeys

This idea is adapted from the Family Fun website: we used cranberry orange muffins instead of cupcakes, and Stretch Island (real) fruit leather instead of "fruit product" Fruit Rollups. The bodies are still Nutter Butter cookies and the eyes mini chocolate chips (and we used chocolate frosting as they did). We used the toothpicks for the fruit leather as Family Fun did, but with the Stretch Island fruit leather, you don't really need them—it's so thick you can just poke it directly into the muffin. M & G did a great job with assembly, and as for the eating... they loved 'em.