This adorable Thanksgiving centerpiece veggie turkey was my absolute favorite Thanksgiving tradition growing up! It's an edible, crafted turkey 🥦🦃 made completely of veggies, fruit, and a (non-edible) tiny hat. As a kid, I always looked forward to helping my mom make it, and this year I got to make the veggie turkey with my own daughter. We hope your family will love it too! ❤️
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You can do this veggie turkey a couple different ways: (1) Our mom used to make this Thanksgiving centerpiece as more of an artistic piece. It always sat at the center of the table on Thanksgiving and we marvelled at it, as we ate dinner. She also included some less readily edible parts, like uncooked cranberries. (2) I made ours as more of a snackable centerpiece. So, everything on it can and should be eaten, even if it slowly gets less pretty as the night wears on 🤣
👍 Why You'll Love This Turkey Tray
- Fun to make! This is seriously enjoyable to do - my daughter and I had no real plans and just got creative with it!
- Fast & Easy! While the centerpiece looks super intricate, it's actually super easy - it's just stabbing things and putting them in a row! And it took less than a half hour.
- Doubles as appetizer! My favorite part is that you can eat the damn thing! It also provides something healthy to counterbalance all the heavy Thanksgiving food.
If you're looking for more Thanksgiving crafts, check out our cute DIY napkin rings shaped like woodland creatures, our felt turkey squash, or our gratitude words craft.
🛒 What You Need
Supplies
- Tray or platter - just make sure it's big enough to hold a pineapple
- Toothpicks - if you have skewers too, you can make taller layers of veggies
- Permanent marker - for drawing the eyes on the head
- Tiny hat! - very important 😉
Ingredients
- Pineapple - I recommend this as the 'turkey body' because it's easy to stick toothpicks into and its crown adds to the turkey tail effect.
- Veggies - for the 'feathers' you can do so many things. This is very flexible. Raw veggies (or fruit) that are soft enough to poke through are ideal. We used: cherry tomatoes, cucumber, celery, pickles, radishes, and bell pepper. We also used pickles and green olives, and broccoli & cauliflower as garnish. For the beak we used a bell pepper and the wattle was a radish peel.
- Orange for the head - you could also use an apple or any other round, soft-ish produce.
📋 Instructions
This is a really simple centerpiece to make. All you're really doing is sticking veggies into a pineapple with toothpicks 🤣 Pineapple is the perfect base because you can poke into it easily, and the crown adds to the turkey tail effect! 🍍 Take our instructions as a loose guideline because you can do whatever you want. Have fun with it! Honestly, ours is different every time.
Step 1 - TURKEY BODY: Slice off a sliver of the pineapple so it doesn't wobble on the tray.
Step 2 - FEATHERS: Add your veggie layers, starting at the butt end of the pineapple, working towards the crown. Attach your veggies to the pineapple with toothpicks and/or skewers.
Step 2, cont: Keep adding as many veggie layers as you like. Go wild!
Step 3 - TURKEY HEAD: Make your head out of an orange. Draw on the eyes, make a bell pepper beak and radish peel wattle. Attach to pineapple and add tiny hat!
Step 4 - THE FINAL TRAY: Add broccoli & cauliflower florets (or any other veggies) around the turkey to complete the centerpiece.
And, I mean, check out that cute turkey butt! Serve with a dip, if you like!
✔️ Tips and Tricks
- I used three sizes of pokey things to stick everything into the pineapple: toothpicks, skewers, and skewers that I cut in half. You can use whatever size you like.
- Design: start with smaller veggies, using toothpicks to stick into the pineapple. Work up to a higher height, with longer veggies, eventually using skewers to add bigger veggies to the pineapple or alternating veggies (like kabobs).
- Softer veggies and fruit will be easier to pierce with toothpicks.
- You don't have to peel the cucumber, but I peeled it in a pattern just cause it looked cool.
- You can totally skip the pepper beak and radish wattle, and just draw the whole face on the orange, it it's easier.
- It might take 2-3 skewers and/or toothpicks to attach the orange to the pineapple.
- We had to stick a toothpick in the top of the orange to hold the tiny hat in place.
❓ FAQ
Yes - you can make some of this veggie turkey ahead of time. Up to 24 hours in advance, you can cut up all the veggies and refrigerate them in a sealed bag or container. I would wait to put them on skewers until you're ready to assemble the centerpiece, though.
Pick veggies that are easy to poke through with a toothpick or skewer. Softer veggies are best: cherry tomatoes, cucumber, celery, bell peppers, zucchini, radish, green beans, sugar snap peas, and mushrooms. You can also use pickled veggies, like mini pickles, olives, pickled asparagus, and pickled onions.
🥗 Yummy Thanksgiving Sides!
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🦃 Thanksgiving Centerpiece Veggie Turkey
Equipment
- 1 medium-sized tray
- 1 tiny hat
Ingredients
- 1 pineapple
- handful cherry or grape tomatoes
- 1 cucumber cut into thick slices
- handful celery cut into long, thick sticks
- handful baby dill pickles
- handful radishes cut into thick slices
- 1 bell pepper cut into big chunks
- handful olives any kind
- 1 medium orange
- handful broccoli & cauliflower florets for garnish
Instructions
- TURKEY BODY: Cut a sliver off the side of your pineapple, length-wise, so the pineapple can rest on the tray without wobbling. Place the pineapple on top of your tray, cut side down.
- FEATHERS: Now start to make your layers of veggies (aka feathers). Start the first layer opposite the crown (the spiky top of the pineapple), attaching each veggies with a toothpick or skewer. Here are the layers we did:1st layer: 12 tomatoes2nd layer: 5 cucumber slices3rd layer: 10 celery stalks4th layer: 7 pickles, topped with 7 radish slices5th layer: 4 skewers of alternating bell peppers and radishes, topped with olives
- THE HEAD: Draw two eyes on the front of your orange. Then cut a small chunk of bell pepper as the beak and a tiny radish peel as the wattle. Stick a toothpick into the orange under the eyes, and attach the wattle and beak. Then take 1-3 toothpicks and stick them into the back of the orange, attaching the orange to the pineapple butt. Finishing touch: add the tiny hat.
- THE FINAL TRAY: Surround the turkey with broccoli and cauliflower florets, or any extra veggies. Serve with a dip on the side.
Notes
- I used three sizes of pokey things to stick everything into the pineapple: toothpicks, skewers, and skewers that I cut in half. You can use whatever size you like.
- Design: start with smaller veggies, using toothpicks to stick into the pineapple. Work up to a higher height, with longer veggies, eventually using skewers to add bigger veggies to the pineapple or alternating veggies (like kabobs).
- Softer veggies and fruit will be easier to pierce with toothpicks.
- You don't have to peel the cucumber, but I peeled it in a pattern just cause it looked cool.
- You can totally skip the pepper beak and radish wattle, and just draw the whole face on the orange, it it's easier.
- It might take 2-3 skewers and/or toothpicks to attach the orange to the pineapple.
- We had to stick a toothpick in the top of the orange to hold the tiny hat in place.
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. While we are not certified nutritionists, we work with a Wordpress-integrated nutrition API to calculate our recipes' ingredient values.
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