Happy Thanksgiving – Fudge turkeys

Today is our family Thanksgiving dinner. Though tomorrow is the official holiday here in Canada, we have our dinner on Sunday, so that there’s still a day to unwind and relax and enjoy leftovers before heading back to work. I made these turkeys as edible placesetting decorations with dinner. I had been looking for some sort of recipe for Thanksgiving-themed desserts, but all I could find were cookie-cutouts, which are sort of boring. So I created my own turkeys. Here’s the recipe, if you’d like to make some:

Fudge Thanksgiving Turkeys

Body:

• Use your favourite fudge recipe  – or –
• Use my mom’s home-ec recipe (I used the latter)

1. Line a cookie sheet with wax paper and place in fridge while making fudge. Remove when fudge is ready.
2. Once the fudge is made, instead of laying it out in a dish, scoop up portions with a spoon and roll into balls by hand.
3. Place on cookie sheet, and repeat. Place in fridge to cool.
4. Should make 14-18 turkey bodies, depending on the size of balls you form.

Head and tail:

• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup white chips
• (or 2 cups of one colour or the other)

1. Spread a second cookie sheet with wax paper and place in the fridge to cool.
2. Melt down the chocolate chips in a double-boiler, or in a small pot suspended inside a larger pot containing boiling water.
3. Remove from heat when melted and spoon into sandwich baggie. Cut tip off one corner to fashion an icing bag.
4. Take cookie sheet from fridge, and squiggle the chocolate into rainbow arcs on the wax paper to create tail feathers. Make sure there’s an arc on the bottom of the rainbow, too, where the tail will fit over the body.
5. For heads, in a continuous motion squeeze a large blob for the base of the neck then move up to form the neck, then squeeze a large blob for the head. Allow the chocolate to taper as you pull away to form the beak.
6. Repeat with white chocolate if desired. Make enough head-and-tail pairs to fit all of the fudge bodies you made.
7. Add a band across the top of the tail using the opposite colour, and use a toothpick to add eyes and wattle. (I was using up the last of a package and ran out of white chocolate, so unfortunately the brown turkeys didn’t get tail-bands or eyes.)
8. Place sheet in fridge and allow to cool.

Assembling:

1. Just in the microwave, melt about a tablespoon of chocolate chips (a couple of dozen will be plenty). Mix smooth with a knife.
2. Carefully peel a tail and a head from the wax paper. They should come up fairly easily.
3. Set it on the balled fudge and if necessary pinch the fudge into shape to allow it to fit reasonably closely. Flatten the turkey’s “butt” end to be flush-ish with the tail (as it is in real turkeys). Remove tail and set to one side.
4. Using knife, apply some melted chocolate to the spot on the ball of fudge where the tail will sit. Place the tail snugly into the chocolate adhesive.
5. Apply a thin amount of chocolate to the back of the head. Press gently onto front of fudge.
6. Repeat for rest of turkeys.

Return to fridge to cool and set, but should be fine to leave at room temperature once adhesive has hardened.

Author: Seabrooke

Author of Peterson Field Guide to Moths. #WriteOnCon Mastermind. Writer of action/thriller SF/F YA. Story junkie. Nature nut. Tea addict. Mother. Finding happiness in the little things. Twitter: @SeabrookeN / @SeabrookeLeckie View all posts by Seabrooke