Cookie Turkeys

One of the Thanksgiving traditions we have in our house is to make "Cookie Turkeys". We have kept this tradition ever since my kids were in diapers. It doesn't matter where we spend Thanksgiving, we get together as a family and produce trays of these treats. One year we were in a hotel room Thanksgiving morning, but I made sure to bring the ingredients.

The supply list is simple: Oatmeal Cookies ( I like the Mothers brand the best), mini Reeses peanut butter cups, chocolate and white frostings, green food coloring, red hot candies, candy corn and chocolate chips.

Mix a few drops of green food coloring into the white frosting= green frosting. The frosting serves as your "glue" to put the cookie pieces together.

First spread some green frosting on the bottom of a cookie. Balance the 2nd cookie standing up. Using the chocolate frosting as a glue on the back of the mini Reeses peanut butter cup, attach to the front. The peanut butter cup will also help balance the cookie standing up.
**Try not to eat too many Reeses peanut butter cups in the process, or you won't have enough left to make more cookies. Notice we now buy the jumbo bag of Reeses.

Using the chocolate frosting as a glue on the back of your candy pieces, add a chocolate chip and red hot for the turkey front. Then add on candy corn for the turkey feathers.
This is what the final product should look like.
But if you are my son Paul, he likes to make his turkey look like it came out of a nuclear reactor. He mixes the frostings together to make them look like muck, and adds multiple heads. His turkey feathers come out at all angles. Every year he tries to come up with a more weird turkey from the year before. I let him be and consider this his creative outlet.
This is a fun activity on Thanksgiving morning to bring all the young children in the family together for a project while the turkey is cooking.

I set a Cookie Turkeys next to each plate as part of the place setting. Most people eat theirs before the pie is served.