So I said to my husband, “I’m going to make a rainbow turkey cake to show how folks can alter the instructions in the Turkey Cake ebook to be creative. And because it amuses me. And because it’d be an awesome way for someone to come out during the holidays.”
With wide eyes he exclaimed, “OH MY GOD! You work for NBC?!”
Bing BONG bong!
More seriously, this is an easy adaptation. Just work the feathers as instructed in the book, but vary the colours accordingly. I decided not to add wings because I didn’t want them to detract from the pattern, plus that shows how the wings really are optional.
For the comb, instead of working with one red piece to start, make a little sausage of each colour, brush a bit of water between them, and pinch them together, using the natural bumps that form along the top.
Pinch out those comb sausages to form a Mohawk that’ll amuse even the most hardened punk rocker at your Thanksgiving dinner.
For the snood, pick three colours and do a mini Skinner Blend to get the gradient. I used orange, red, and purple.
This little gradient piece is a perfect chance to practice a skill in a small scale. You could even do all of the feathers this way for a really impressive, advanced version of this cake.
I chose just to do two colours in the tail as per the ebook, but you could go full-NBC-turkey and make many smaller pieces for a rainbow. If you don’t think such flagrant corporate logoism will make poor Aunt Edna faint into the gravy bowl, that is.
More options with the tail: you could make the feathers stick up instead of being a semi-circle, as long as you either dried them fully in advance or accounted for curl in your design. Advanced users could do a lot of cool things here, but beginners have a safe and easy way to go.
In the end, the holidays are about coming together as a family, expressing gratitude for the fortunate parts of your life, and then snarfing down ridiculous amounts of high-calorie food. So why not make at least some of them look fabulous?
Rejoice and love yourself today because, turkey, you were formed this way.
