Nordic Ware 3D Turkey Shaped Baking Pan - Bronze Nonstick Roasting Pan for Thanksgiving, Christmas & Holiday Turkey Cooking - Perfect for Oven Roasting, Serving & Festive Dinner Presentations

This cake mold is quality heavy-gauge aluminum and is as realistic as 3d molds allow.Here are my comments and suggestions to achieve excellent results:1. Use the recipe that comes with this cake pan: The recipe makes enough batter to fill the mold correctly (a standard box mix will not) - plus it makes a great, moist and tasty pumpkin-nut cake.2. Be careful with the recipe: Two ingredients (apple sauce and vanilla) are listed but not mentioned when wet ingredients are combined. So remember to add them at that point. Also chop the walnuts into small pieces.3. Grease the pan liberally with Crisco or equivalent vegetable shortening. Flour liberally but be careful not to fill mold crevices. My cakes came out of the pan perfectly with all mold detail intact. (Note that with such intricate detail you may omit frosting altogether and simply coat with powdered sugar if so desired.)4. Fill the pans correctly: Spread the batter from the middle out to the edges, especially to the base, head and tail tips. When filled the middle can be lower than the peripheral edges because the cake will rise in the middle in any case - and you need to cut off excess so that the two halves fit together.5. Bake long enough but not too long: The baking time will take longer than the directions indicate. I believe mine took 20 or so minutes more. After the first toothpick test, continue baking and checking every 5 minutes until the toothpick-in-the-middle test comes out clean.6. Always use an inverted cookie sheet to remove the cake halves from the mold. Otherwise you'll face the possibility of a broken turkey base.7. Use canned frosting for ease of decorating: On this first attempt I bought chocolate for the body and cream cheese for the other colors. Next time I will only use plain white frosting and then color it. That's because I want lighter shades of brown for the feathers plus I think white frosting will better accompany the cake's pumpkin flavor. Cream cheese frosting does not hold its shape well enough or harden as good as regular white frosting.8. Use varying sizes of petal cake decorating tips for the feathers: I had only one size this time - Wilton 104 petal tip. Next time I will use petal tips 101, 102 and 103 to create incremental changes in feather size.9. Photo of my first attempt: [...]