I love the idea of this particular Thanksgiving turkey…because it’s cake! Buddy Valastro (“Cake Boss”) recently released his first-ever cookbook Baking with the Cake Boss: 100 of Buddy’s Best Recipes and Decorating Secrets and he was kind enough to allow me to share this recipe from the book with you. (Thanks Simon & Schuster!)
I also received a copy of Baking with the Cake Boss: 100 of Buddy’s Best Recipes and Decorating Secrets to review and it’s the perfect holiday gift for bakers – from beginners to more advanced ones. When I looked through the cookbook, the name of several baking friends popped into my head. Buddy shares information about baking equipment and ingredients in addition to over 100 recipes for cakes and cupcakes, cookies, pastries, pies and tarts. I think that the more advanced bakers (like my friend Felicia) will especially enjoy the frosting and filling tips for the various special occasion cakes. In fact, if you’re a home baker, I suggest getting it for yourself now because there are several fall and winter themed cakes including Chanukah, Santa and Christmas lights cakes. Meanwhile, you can begin with this turkey cake…
Thanksgiving Turkey
Yield: One 8-inch Bundt Cake
Ingredients:
- 1 Bundt cake in the flavor of your choosing (8 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep)
- *Chocolate Fudge Frosting (in a pastry bag fitted with the #6 star tip)
- *A total of 6 cups white, red, black, yellow, brown, and orange Decorator’s Buttercream each in its own party bag fitted with the #126 rose tip
- *¼ cup black Decorator’s Buttercream in a parchment pencil
Cooking Instructions:
1. Fill the cake: Pipe the cake full of fudge frosting.
2. Shape the turkey: Use a serrated knife to cut the cake at one edge where the central hole meets the cake. Set the larger piece of the cake, frosting side down, on a doily-lined cardboard circle on your turntable. Pipe a dab of white buttercream and seal the small piece in place in front of the larger piece. Pipe white buttercream over any gaps between the two sections to create a smooth working surface.
3. Pipe the plumage: Pipe red buttercream around the high, open end of the turkey in a ruffle pattern. Moving toward the lower, narrower front end of the cake, pipe a ruffled black ring in front the red, overlapping slightly. Continue in this way, piping overlapping ruffled rings of white, yellow, brown, and orange frosting, until you have reached the very front (narrow end) of the cake, starting over with red if necessary. Be sure to finish with white at the very front of the cake. Then cover over the open back of the cake (that is, where the frosting shows) with overlapping layers of frosting, ideally orange, white, red, and black.
4. Feather the frosting: Pull the edge of a cake icing spatula through the frosting at 1-inch intervals, starting at the back center-top of the cake and pulling all the way forward to the narrow, lower front to create a feathered effect in the icing.
5. Pipe the beak and comb: Using the white buttercream, pull up and out from the bottom front of the cake to make a beak. Use the red buttercream to pipe the comb. Use the parchment pencil to pipe the eyes.
Recipe Notes:
-You can find recipes for the asterisked (*) items in Buddy’s book.
-You need to use a #126 rose tip for all of the colors called for here, so you will need several bags and rose tips. If you don’t have enough tips, you do not need to use every color called for, although the more colors you use, the better your turkey will look.
This is one of those recipes where a picture is worth a thousand words, so you can click on Thanksgiving Turkey Cake to see a pdf of the recipe with step by step pictures.