Thanksgiving Dessert Mantel – A Pumpkin Extravaganza!

Earlier this fall, I shared some inspiration photos for a Thanksgiving Dessert Table. My mother and sister ran with the idea and created this great Thanksgiving Dessert Mantel above the fireplace for our Canadian Thanksgiving last month. I know that so many of my American friends are gearing up for your Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks, so I wanted to share this fun idea for any of you looking for a festive way to display your Thanksgiving goodies.

We usually set up an extra long table in this room for Thanksgiving and the fireplace is at the very end, making it easy for everyone to see all the yummy desserts lined up for later. It’s always warm in that room when everyone is gathered together, so we didn’t need to have the fireplace on and worry about things melting.

They used a combination of pie plates on different cake stands for height and various pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. When they got everything set up, we realized that we were serving mostly pumpkin themed desserts. I guess we had pumpkins on the brain!

My sister made her awesome Pumpkin Spice Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Icing. They were SO GOOD. A solid chocolate turkey from Vermont Nut Free Chocolates held court in the center of the plate.

My mom made our family’s favourite Pumpkin Pies from scratch. Whiskey thought they smelled fantastic.

The flowers were picked up from a local greenhouse and made into simple arrangements in vintage vases. I talked about the different flowers used in my Thanksgiving recap. Flowers always make everything seem more special!

Nana made her delicious date squares, set out on a cute vintage tiered dessert stand. I really need to get the recipe from her and share it with all of you. They are my dad’s favourite and he always makes a beeline for them when she brings them out.

When we ordered the chocolate turkey from Vermont Nut Free Chocolates, we also picked this awesome White Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Fudge. It was fantastic! Fudge is a hard thing to find nut-free because most companies make it with nutty flavours, so this was a real treat for me.

Not only did this look festive for Thanksgiving but it was also an easy way to store the desserts away from the dogs. Shadow has a tendency to swipe food from the table when no one is looking (remember the shredded Christmas stocking incident) and I’m sure that Whiskey wouldn’t have minded sneaking a lick of that pumpkin pie.

We may just have to do something like this for our Christmas dinner too. It would look fantastic with another award-worthy gingerbread house from my sister!