Today I made a halloween cake. I took pictures of the process. Let me note that the light batter and the pumpkins are very much neon orange in person, and this is one of those rare times that my camera just doesn't want to show real colors.

I made 4 cake layers. 2 bright orange "yellow" cakes and 2 (very rich) chocolate ones. These are the shavings, as I spent as much time lovingly shaping them as anything else.

It is a checkered cake. Basically you cut all the cakes into rings and flip them around between the layers (securing them with frosting), like so:

Patch up any broken bits with chocolate butter frosting, and bingo.

It's around this point that the new knife set we bought decided it hated me.

This is the third time I have cut my hand since we got this knife set a few days ago.

Hey, knife set!

Anyway, moving on. I frosted the cake with chocolate icing. Unfortunately I didn't actually have enough chocolate icing, and while I just barely covered the whole cake, it isn't exactly smooth and perfect. We were out of ingredients, as I was making the icing myself. I'd used all the powdered sugar for basic fun-colored icing, as I was mixing hues to draw a pumpkin patch on top (Food coloring is awesome). I ended up with an entire unused baggy of bright green icing and not nearly enough chocolate. Sigh.

That said, I am actually quite happy with the finished product.

Aaaand, upon cutting it open!

Ta-da!

I am entirely pleased with this cake. I didn't kill it. I dare say I am really improving my cake-making skills. Which is great, considering I adore making cakes and I dream of, one day, being good enough to make gorgeous cakes people would want at their weddings. And I haven't been making cakes for very long, gimme a break here (I have been cooking for many years, but in all honesty I have only made maybe 5 cakes in my entire lifetime. And most of them sucked. A lot. ...The psychology there is that my favorite form of culinary arts is in cake and pastry making, and all my culinary dreams are based in that field. Since I really want to be good at it, I fear failure, and don't even try. Sad, I know. But I just made a cake. Shut up.).

It is messy and imperfect, but it is my baby.

Happy Hallowhatsits.