Mariclare Bakes: Thanksgiving Edition

I love Thanksgiving. It is a great holiday where you get to visit your friends or family, join together to show your gratitude for each other, and eat as much as you can. You get to eat turkey, rolls, green beans, potatoes, and a bunch of other delicious food. But the part I am always most excited about is the desserts. You have your staples, like pumpkin pie, apple pie, and ice cream, but for this edition of Mariclare Bakes, I wanted to make something more original that no one else will be bringing to Thanksgiving dinner. I decided to make turkey-shaped cake pops. It might sound a little strange, but trust me, they are festive and delicious with a chocolate coating and a brownie cake pop inside.

PSA: I used https://www.loveandlemons.com/brownies-recipe/ for my brownie recipe.

Recipe

Ingredients:

Brownie

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 3/4 teaspoons salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Legs

• 1 bag of pretzel sticks (relatively thin)
• 1 bag of mini marshmallows

Covering

• 1 bag of candy melts 
• Brown food coloring

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease your baking pan.
• Mix the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, chocolate chips, and salt together in a bowl.
• In another bowl, mix the eggs, canola oil, water, and vanilla together.
• Combine the dry ingredients and wet ingredients into one bowl and mix until fully combined.
• Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake for 40 min, or until a toothpick comes out with only a few crumbs.
• Once baked, cut the edges of the brownies off and crumble the brownie into a dough-like texture. if your dough is not wet enough to form into a ball, then you can add some milk to the dough to make it more moist. 
• Once you have a shapeable dough, take around a tablespoon of dough and shape it into the body of the turkey, with the top flat and the bottom pinched, similar to the shape of a strawberry. Place in the fridge 
• While that is cooling, take your pretzels and mini marshmallows and break your pretzel stick into thirds, take one-third and stick it in the middle of the marshmallow, repeat that process until you have enough to have two legs for each cake pop. 
• When done make the legs melt the candy melts of your choice, I just used the vanilla ones, once fully melted add brown food coloring to the candy melts until you get your desired turkey color.
• Then take your cake pops out and dip the marshmallow part of the legs in the candy melts and use that to attach the leg to the cake pop, you may need to use a toothpick to hold it in place, so the legs will stick. 
• Once all the legs are attached, put the cake pops in the freezer for 30 minutes.
• When the cake pops are frozen, you can either pour or dip them in melted candy.
• When all the cake pops are coated, let them harden, and then enjoy!

Reviews:

Allie Tucker: 8.5/10- “Delicious, so good, I like the pretzels. It is also really cute for Thanksgiving.” 

Olivia Rodriguez: 8/10- “The chocolate is good, but it feels a bit heavy. Also I like the crunch of the pretzels, it really adds to it”

Neiman Shivers: 9/10- “It’s really good, the cake is moist and the pretzels brings the salty and sweet.”