By Chef Jörg Amsler
These cute Thanksgiving desserts are the cookies I make for Thanksgiving because I cook at my house. They were also very popular at my bakery. I set the table using one on each plate as a name tag. I use a basic 1-2-3 dough for this recipe and all the 3-D cookies I make for the holidays throughout the year.
1-2-3 Dough
- 1 lb. sugar
- 2 lb. butter
- 3 lb. flour
- 3 eggs
These cookies use a chocolate version of this recipe. Replace 2 Tbsp. of the flour with 2 Tbsp. cocoa powder.
- Cream the butter and sugar.
- Add eggs and beat until creamy.
- Add dry ingredients.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in fridge. The dough must be cold to work with it.
Tools:
- Cookie cutters: small, medium and large heart, serrated round
- Parchment paper
- Rolling pin
- Knife
- White and dark chocolate
- Chocolate fondant or modeling chocolate
Steps:
- Roll out cookie dough.
- Cut out small, medium and large hearts and round shapes from the dough.
- Using the knife, cut the bottom of the large heart off so it will stand up.
- Bake on parchment paper for 12 – 15 minutes at 350 degrees F.
- Allow cookies to cool and arrange them so you have all the cookies needed for each turkey together: 1 large heart, 1 medium heart, 1 small heart, 1 round.
- Roll out either modeling chocolate or chocolate fondant.
- Use the same cutters to cut out fondant or modeling chocolate to apply to the cookies they fit.
- Melt white and dark chocolate.
- Pipe feathers on large heart with dark chocolate to enhance your cute Thanksgiving desserts.
- Using the white chocolate, pipe a c-shape on each chocolate feather, as shown.
- On the round cookie, which will become the turkey’s torso, pipe feathers in white.
- Take the little heart, which will become the head, and pipe the two eyes and beak.
- Pipe three claws on the medium heart shaped cookie for the feet.
- Use chocolate to glue pieces of body together: the large heart goes on the bottom, then the round, then the small heart on top. Pipe chocolate in the center of the medium heart and stand the large heart on top. You can lean it up against a glass until it hardens.
Tips:
Please keep these tips in mind when making these cute Thanksgiving desserts.
When you melt the chocolate, don’t make the chocolate too hot. Heat it only until it melts so it seizes up quickly and you don’t wait long for cookie to set.
Make two different turkeys: one big, one small, putting the two together they look cute. Don’t always make eyes looking straight forward. They can look in different directions to make them more interesting.
You can make a little plaque to put in front of the feet or before piping the beak, lay the paper with the guest’s name on it in place and pipe the chocolate beak over it to make it look like he’s holding it in his mouth.
Very cute Turkeys Jorg,
I was thinking of baking some cookies but didn’t want them to end up like the previous years – Just normal round-shaped cookies we usually see everywhere. I never knew making the turkey shape es actually quite easy, and here I thought it’ll end up flat haha, good to know it’s standable!
Can’t wait to make, do you think if I add in a little bit of salt to give it a salty taste would affect it much?
Hi Riaz! You won’t need to add any salt to these cookies. They are perfect as they are! Please let me know how they come out.
In my country, however, there is no Thanksgiving /Estonia/ I really liked the concept of your cookie and that you used chocolate instead of egg white for the glaze. A very interesting shape came out of a turkey, at first it was not clear that this turkey is. Do you eat it later too or is it just for decoration?
These are awesome! Thank you very much for the visuals and great step by step explanation, as a beginner I can’t thank you enough. Some blogs expect that most of their readers are experts and already understood everything described. These cookies are cute and I am going to try it out this weekend. Woohoo!
So glad you enjoyed the tutorial! Post pics if you can. We love to see your work!