Turkey Cake Pops for Thanksgiving

Are you ready for some cake pop magic? Meet Lisa, the talent behind Pops By Lisa. Her custom cake pop business is located in the San Francisco area, where she creates cake pops for every occasion, from birthdays and baby showers, to holidays and weddings. Lisa’s awesome cake pop talent first caught my eye on Instagram when I saw her adorable Minnie Mouse cake pops and now I’m thrilled to have her here on sugarkissed.net showing us how to make Thanksgiving turkey cake pops.

My family loves their traditional Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, but ever since I started making these cute little turkey cake pops a few years ago, they have become my family’s new favorite. I promise if you bring these little guys to any of your holiday gatherings this year, they are sure to be a huge hit.

How to Make Oreo Truffle Cake Pops

What You Will Need:

1 package of Oreo cookies
1 16-oz. box of cream cheese
Wax paper or silicone baking mat
Mini cookie scoop (optional)

Using a food processor, grind up your Oreo cookies until they are fine crumbs with no big cookie chunks left. Slowly start adding your cream cheese, one small spoonful at a time. I use about ¾ of the box of cream cheese for one package of Oreos. This is what the consistency should look like when you’re done:

How to Make Cake Balls

Now it’s time to start scooping. I use a small cookie scoop to scoop my cake balls so they are all the same size and the dough comes out of the scoop easily. I get about 20 cake balls from one package of Oreos. Scoop all of your cake balls on to a sheet of wax paper or parchment paper (I’m using a silicone baking sheet here that I got at Crate & Barrel).

Once all your cake balls are scooped out, it’s time to start rolling! This is the fun part for me! Roll your cake balls gently, making sure not to pack them too tightly or you’ll get cracks in your candy coating when you try and dip them later. I use a plastic airtight container to hold my cake balls when I stick them in the refrigerator. When you’re done rolling all your cake balls, stick them in the fridge overnight or in the freezer for 15 minutes to firm up.

How To Dip and Decorate Your Turkey Cake Pops

What You Will Need:

2 trays of chocolate CandiQuik coating
1 bag of candy corn (I’m using this s’mores candy corn that I found at Target because I like the colors better than regular candy corn – but use whatever colors you like for your “turkey feathers”)
20 lollipop sticks or colorful paper straws
40 candy eyes
1 container of rainbow chip sprinkles
1 container of autumn leaves sprinkles (or similar shape)
1 container of red hearts sprinkles
1 bag of Hershey’s Drops chocolate candies
Cake pop stand

Since I’ve been making these for a few years now, I’ve figured out a couple of ways to make the process easier in order to make a lot of cake pops in a shorter period of time. We’ll start by doing all of the prep work for the cake pops before we start the actual dipping and decorating process.

I like to start by making the heads for the turkeys. For each face you’ll use one Hershey’s Drops candy. Using a little bit of your melted chocolate and a toothpick, you’ll attach the two candy eyes, an orange rainbow chip sprinkle for the nose, and an upside-down red heart sprinkle for the “gobble”. Continue assembling until you have approximately 20 heads.

Now you can start dipping your cake balls and assembling your turkeys! Yay! Take your cake balls out of the fridge/freezer. Start by melting your candy coating in a microwave-safe container for two minutes on 50% power. Stir thoroughly and continue melting on 50% power for 30-second intervals until it is completely melted. Be very careful not to over cook your candy coating.

Start by dipping 1/4” of your lollipop stick or paper straw into your melted candy coating and stick about halfway through your cake ball. Set your cake pops in your cake pop stand until the coating hardens. Then dip each cake pop straight down into the melted coating until the cake ball is completely covered and sealed. Remove the cake pop from the melted coating by pulling it straight up. Then, turn the cake pop at an angle and gently tap off any excess coating.

Helpful Hint: A tall narrow bowl works best for dipping cake pops. Keeping the coating warm throughout the entire dipping process is key to having a smooth coating on your cake pops. To avoid having to repeatedly reheat your coating, a chocolate melting pot is a great tool.

Working quickly while the candy coating is still wet, take a candy corn and hold on the back of the cake ball for a few seconds until you feel it stick. Add two to three more candy corns to make the tail.

After attaching all your candy corns for the tail, attach the head while the coating is still wet as well. If your coating dries too quickly before you can attach the head, just use a toothpick to dab a little bit of your melted candy coating on to the spot where the head should be and then hold your head piece on until it sticks. If you want to add feet, just use your toothpick to dot two little dabs of melted chocolate where the feet should be and add your yellow leaf sprinkles.

For an extra special festive addition, you can use some cute Thanksgiving-themed paper straws instead of regular cake pop sticks!