This Turkey Groom's Cake is such a fun cake for the turkey hunter in your life and it would work for a turkey birthday cake, turkey groom's cake, or any turkey-themed party including Thanksgiving! Since making the first one, I've gotten orders for three more so I thought I'd share some details with you.
This turkey cake 🦃 (above) is the first one I made and it was SO popular on social media - everyone just loved it! In addition to a beautiful cake (if I might say so myself), I also displayed it on a beautiful stump stand that my husband made for me.
When I made the second turkey cake this past weekend (see it below), the mother of the bride asked that I made a few minor changes.
Mostly the changes were about the turkey having a slightly different look. She wanted the texture a little different on the turkey's body, and its head to be a little less blue. I was happy to oblige her requests!
I wish I had more photos of the second cake but the room it was displayed in was very dimly lit and my pictures were terrible. I'm hoping the photographer shares better ones but for now, this is the single photo my husband took at home with his cell phone. ⬆️
So anyway... I'll share the basic details of making this cake below, but first, I have to share a funny story with you. Because I know that's why many of you are here reading 😉 So here's what happened...
I caught the cake on fire.🔥
How, you might be wondering? Let me explain.
But first, I need to give you a little info. The feathers on the cake are edible images and they are "glued" to skewers with melted white chocolate. When I placed them on the cake (by pushing the skewers into the styrofoam ball), some of the white chocolate crumbled off.
When that happened, the cake looked a little messy. See, the crumbles of white chocolate did not look all that appealing dusted over the sticky ganache I used for drip. It almost looked like bits of paper. And I had to fix it.
So I used a fork to try and pick the small bits of chocolate off. But when I did that, it messed up the smooth, shiny surface of the ganache. And I didn't like that either. So what did I do?
I got my food torch and decided I would torch the ganache to melt it and smooth it back out. It worked beautifully... until I got too close to the grass (which was not edible) and caught it on fire. OOPS! 😲🔥
I was able to yank it out and extinguish the (tiny) fire pretty quickly, but y'all. I felt like an idiot. And then I had a tiny sprinkling of ashes on one corner of the cake. I'm pretty sure that was worse than the bits of white chocolate. SMH.
The long and short of it is, I was able to clean all the chocolate and ashes off the cake and make the not-so-perfect finish work. But note to self: do not light your cakes on fire!! Haha!
Turkey Groom's Cake Details:
Anywho... here are some details for you if you're making a turkey cake.
- For both cakes, I baked 10-inch and 12-inch cakes in Magic Line pans. The first cake was a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting (colored brown). The second cake was butter cake with vanilla chocolate buttercream.
- Both cakes had ganache drip. Both also were displayed with chocolate-dipped strawberries!
- The turkey on both cakes was started by covering an 8-inch styrofoam ball with buttercream, then Satin Ice Chocolate Brown fondant.
- The turkey head for both cakes was made with white modeling chocolate and dusted with petal dusts to add color.
- The feathers on both cakes were edible images that I printed, cut out, then "glued" to skewers with white chocolate.
- Other details of these two cakes varied. For one I used some red fondant and I used round frosting tips to add texture to the body. For the other, I added layers of brown fondant (different shades) with added texture and cuts to give the turkey more dimension.
- All of the (highly flammable 🔥😉) greenery and cattails on the cakes were purchased at Hobby Lobby and I pushed the ends into straws to insert into the cakes.
And that's that... most of the pertinent details. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment and I'm happy to answer!
Katie
Oh my gosh! That's one for the books - catching a cake on fire! Glad that it ended up all ok. 🙂
Wendy Lester
Do you know where I could get the turkey feather edible images? I see where you printed yours, I do not have access to a printer.
Rose Atwater
I print and sell edible images. Shoot me an email at rose@rosebakes.com