Thanksgiving Centerpiece Veggie Turkey

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! ❤️

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 a veggie-packed option 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.

✔️ 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

🥗 Yummy Thanksgiving Sides!

Follow Platein28 on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook and Sign up for our newsletter for all the latest recipes and crafts!