Peanut Butter Cup & Candy Corn Turkeys (plus a Cookie Pilgrim Hat)

This is a fun and yummy Thanksgving project from Our Best Bites. 

I have copied and pasted in case the post is no longer available. Today is actually June 8, 2011 so I am post dating for Thanksgiving 2011.  I also plan to PIN IT @ Pinterest  :-)

Between now and then I want to kitchen test these and take my own pictures.

 

If you are reading this post it is most probably because of one of he following reasons:

1) I died (I really hope thatis not the case. If it is, please pray hard for me!!)

2) I moved far, far away and do not have Internet access.

3) OR - Sara's post is no longer available and I did not kitchen test so I am using this as a fall-back.  :-)

 These little turkeys are perfect for school parties, family nights, and Thanksgiving place holders.  At the end there’s an easy pilgrim hat as well.  I don’t really know where this idea originated -- I made the turkeys as a kid as I’m sure many of you have and I’ve seen the little hats all over the internet.  Both are Turkey Day classics, so go have some fun!

Ingredients/Supplies

Double Stuff Oreo Cookies
Candy Corn
Whoppers
Peanut butter Cups
Chocolate frosting
Yellow Frosting
Optional: Red frosting
Optional: black sprinkles for eyes

*For these kinds of things I love to use the little pre-filled tubes of colored frosting you can buy in the baking isle.  The chocolate is easy to make, and homemade actually works a little better because you can make it stiff.  However for the colored details like yellow and red, these little tubes are great.  It doesn’t really matter what they taste like and they last forever (which is both cool and disturbing at the same time.) I’m using store-bought tubes for everything here purely for convenience- works great!

First step:  Grab a cookie.  You don’t have to put frosting in there, but I like to because it holds in the candy corn a little better. Just give it a little squeeze of chocolate.

Then stuff in your candy-corn.  If you’re in some sort of candy corn shortage, you can cut off the white tips to use later for your beaks.  I think the candy corn sticks in better with the tip so I leave it on.  Go ahead and do all of the cookies through this step.

Next put a dab of frosting on the opposite end of the cookie and secure it to the “base” cookie.  It helps to place them next to a wall as they dry so they stay put.

While those are drying, unwrap your PB cups.  Take a sharp knife and cut a sliver off of one end.  (I don’t need to tell you what to do with the sliver, do I?)  It helps to gently cut in a sawing motion so you don’t break the PB cup.  (Although I wouldn’t have to tell you what to do with a broken one either, would I?)  Cut it from the bottom like I show here:

Once those are ready, flip your cookies over, but you may find it’s easy to keep them next to the wall.  My frosting was a bit soft, so they needed the extra support.
Place a dab of frosting on the pb cup, and place it on the cookie like so:

Now those little guys will need heads, so glue a whopper on there with frosting as well. I put frosting on the side of the whopper that hits both the cookie and the PB cup.  Wouldn’t want a turkey running around with its head cut off, would we??

While they’re still laying there, use a dab of frosting (I use yellow) and glue on the white tip of a candy corn for a beak.  Put two yellow dots on for eyes, and for the black spots in the eyes you can use a dab of chocolate frosting, or a mini chocolate chip, or a little sprinkle like I’ve used.  A sprinkle is really the perfect size if you have them.

Once the beak stays put you can flip them over and draw on some little yellow feet.  If you have red frosting too (usually comes in a set with the tube of yellow) you can add a little wattle.

And there you go, cute as can be!

These make really cute place card holders too, for either a kid, or adult table!  I just made little name tags with Sara's Silhouette and then I popped them in there on toothpicks.
How cute is my little turkey family?

Stick one on each plate and everyone will say “Awwwwwwe….” If you have kids old enough to handle making them, it’s a fun project for them to be in charge of.

They’re also darling combined with pilgrim hats.

Those are just marshmallows dipped in chocolate and placed on a fudge strip cookie.  Use yellow frosting to make the buckle.  (Pretty much the Thanksgiving version of the Halloween witch hats seen in this post!)