TikTok's Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Turkeys Are Turning Heads
If you're looking to liven up your holiday party spread with a unique finger food, or if you've been tapped to bring a dessert to a Thanksgiving potluck, then TikTok has you covered. This particular TikTok trend is a year old at least, but it's viral again just before Thanksgiving 2021: the chocolate-covered strawberry turkey.
These turkeys may have breast and drumsticks, but they have no white meat and no dark meat. They're a clever way to create a more or less accurate turkey shape with a few basic snack items. You'll need strawberries, mini marshmallows, pretzel sticks, and melted chocolate. (None of these come to mind as Thanksgiving menu items ... unless you're Charlie Brown, of course.)
The most-liked strawberry turkey video on TikTok right now (834,200 likes and counting), from @_ellagrace12, demonstrates the most basic version of the chocolate-covered strawberry turkey. Poke the pretzel sticks into the mini marshmallows, use a little melted chocolate to stick your pretzel-and-marshmallow "drumsticks" to each side of a strawberry, then dip the whole thing in chocolate. @_ellagrace12 pulls off the turkey illusion, although the drumsticks look a little too much like drumsticks — as in, those fuzzy mallets marching bands use for bass drums.
Use more marshmallows to make a more realistic chocolate-covered strawberry turkey
Other TikTok demonstrations of the chocolate-covered strawberry turkey aim for more realism. As TikToker @doubledippeddesserts showed in November 2020, you can cut a corner off your mini marshmallows to create a taper that enables the marshmallow to attach to the strawberry in a way that looks more natural. To take it even further, you can give your turkey a properly plump breast using a technique demonstrated by @delish on TikTok: Cut another mini marshmallow in half diagonally, and stick each half to either side of the top of your strawberry.
TikToker @doubledippeddesserts gives early credit for the strawberry turkey idea to another TikToker, @chocolatedipsbylisa. Their version uses two marshmallows on each pretzel stick, for a fuller-looking drumstick. Then Lisa gets a little "extra" by painting gold highlighter dust over the chocolate after it dries.
You can't taste a TikTok video, but the verdict in @chocolatedipsbylisa's comments was fairly unanimous on this holiday finger food's visual appeal: "This is the cutest idea ever."