Out of the Box

I could give you the requisite, "Sorry for the delay I've been really busy"  but instead I'll jump into tell you about the most recent goings-on of my kitchen, and try to do better next time. 

Halloween has come and gone and so has the Chocolate Spider cake that I made for our neighborhood’s Halloween party.  One of the ladies commented on how “clever” it was to dye the white cake orange but her son couldn’t eat it because he’s allergic to dyes.  Luckily, I hadn’t used any dye. 

For some reason, in Qatar the egg yolks have a natural bright orange color to them.  Maybe it’s what they feed the chickens, maybe its because of all the sun the chickens get but combined with half a cup of fresh squeezed orange juice, real butter and vanilla extract the color comes out the most wonderful pumpkin-orange. 

I use the Better Homes and Gardens Yellow Cake recipe with the additions listed above and covered the cake in white butter cream frosting.  The cool part about the frosting I used was melting it and then pouring it over the cake to get almost perfectly smooth layers.  Melting it also gives the butter cream a little bit of a sheen once its cooled (thank you for that tidbit, Katie Gipe!).  Once I had put three layers of melted butter cream frosting on I melted half a bag of dark chocolate chips and then “drew” the spiders on wax paper.  While those cooled and hardened I drew the spider webs onto the cooled cake. 

After making three spiders an a big web over the cake, I used the extra chocolate to make little swirls and do-dads to stick in the top of some cupcakes I made for one of my bosses on his birthday.  Unfortunately there’s no evidence because I completely forgot to take a picture.

In short, know that a cake mix gives you fantastic, easy, wonderfully fluffy  results.  But I have to admit that I’m partial to putting a little extra effort into it and getting back something just as fluffy, but way more fun.