Turkey Cake

So I started teaching classes last year and it has been a learning process but enjoyable every step of the way. Some of them are simple like Cake 101 where you learn to stack, frost, and fondant your own cake but others are more complicated like my turkey cake class. I taught this one right before thanksgiving and everyone had an awesome cake to brighten their celebration ^^ The class was a huge success and now I’m gonna lay out how I did it so you too can learn how but nothing is as good as in person instruction so I highly recommend taking one of my classes.

To start I carve the cake into a dome (in this case a foam one for display purposes) using a small knife at a 45 degree angle I went all the way around the top of the cake in a circle, then I made more cuts at various angels to round out the top. Next I took 2 rice krispy treats and formed each into a drumstick shape. I put those drumsticks on each side of your cake, a little towards the back with the skinny sides pointing towards each other. I iced the whole thing with buttercream, an offset spatula, and a lot of patience, after half an hour or so it looked like this. I put it in the freezer to harden up while I worked on the knife.

The knife is made out of fondant but I added some gum paste to it to dry it out faster. I also had to do the knife twice because the first one cracked and broke when I tried to put it into the cake. This is a picture of the first one but for the second I folded in a small straw to give it added stability. The blade can be any size you want but have the straw all the way at the fat end of the blade to insert your handle into. The handle was just hand formed with a toothpick inserted into it so you can attach it to the blade.

Next I covered the whole thing in brown fondant using my hands to smooth it out and get into all the little crevices, cut around the bottom to get rid of all the excess. Use your finger to divide your turkey breast into 2 sections for some added realism. You’ll want to save that extra brown to make a couple of wings which I just hand formed and with some trial and error ended up with a good shape then used some fondant shaping tools to do the feathered bits. I glued them onto my cake with a little frosting. I also made some bone ends with white fondant and the same tools. I cut slices into the skinny ends of my drumsticks and attached my bones to them.

The next step was to use brown food coloring and water to create a nice golden brown, shiny, and crispy looking skin. I used a paintbrush to paint a line of the brown food coloring right down the middle of the divide. Then I switched to water and painted that color down the sides of the cake. I used more brown in all the joins and then water to bring the color around the rest of the cake creating a gradient  over the whole thing and giving it a shiny coating. I also cut a wedge into the back for the stuffing to come out of.

The last bit was to make the stuffing which was just piled up icing with gram cracker crumbs stuck to it. I made some small green peas and orange carrots out of fondant to stick into the stuffing. I cut a skinny wedge section out of the top of one breast of my turkey cake to insert the knife into but I let it dry for 2 days first. I painted it with silver luster dust and vodka after I put it into the cake but you can do it beforehand. The end result was a fantastically realistic looking turkey which I was proud to teach a class on. It took my students about 3 hours to make the cake and then I sent them home with the knifes to insert into the cake as they saw fit ^^ I even had one very creative student who made a rotten turkey with a rat coming out of it (my personal favorite)