BATS--The big, bug scourge of the skies!

Friday was this month's Movable Feast, so I decided to be nice and bring in food.  And by "be nice", I own too much Halloween themed baking shit, and I'm probably not going to have a party this year.  Also, I assume "bring in food" is roughly equivalent to "donate money for all the free wine I intend to guzzle".

I assume we all have fond memories of ghost cakes from Halloween Past.  The only thing to say is that trying to find the pan instructions on the Wilton website is a pain in the ass.  Seriously, why do I get Spooky Cinnamon Rolls before I get "here is how to bake things in this pan"?  Wilton's instructions also assume I have the fortitude to bake 18-20 ghost cakes, which would require washing the pan multiple times during baking rather than putting it in the sink and waiting for the mythical Brownies to clean it.  (IMPORTANT: Do not say any stupid poems and look in a reflective surface or you will learn an important lesson about performing household drudgery.)

I have no idea why I don't remember to always just put melt the frosting (especially if the structural integrity of your cake surface is less than ideal).  Take the top off, make sure there's no foil on the can, and stick it in the microwave for 30.  Stir, and enjoy a smooth, glossy texture.

The tormented souls doomed to wander the Earth on the right have melted frosting.  Those miserable spirits trapped between worlds on the left have room temperature frosting.

If you're not going to let some baking goods company boss you around and are only capable of enough motivation to make 6 ghosts, you'll have enough cake batter left to make 12+ cupcakes.

I'm not really happy with the purple frosting.  It's paler than I'd hoped, and I want you to know that I was most generous with the concentrated "violet" icing color.

Wilton started selling molds for candy picks for those of you who feel that a single serving of frosted cake does not provide enough sugar.  And for jerks like me.

And they've got bats.  I could bake cupcakes in bat-baking cups and then put bat-candies on top of them!  And then after Halloween, I can just make non-holiday themed Bat-cupcakes!

Unfortunately, the Bat Candypick Mold does not come with the Dark Knight's tactical mind or even the Dominoed Daredoll's shopping abilities because it turned out that I had just enough orange candy melts to make 7 bat-candies.  There are 12 11 cupcakes.  I'm not so good with the math, but I suspect that 7 is not 12 11.

Today's candy-related blonde moment: I have red candy melts and yellow candy melts.  Red and yellow make orange.  There must be some way to turn this to my advantage...

(The candy mixing reminds me of my grandfather's Kodak retirement party)

When you're making orange, you generally want to use more yellow than red.  However, it is possible to mix red candy melts with yellow candy melts to make orange candies.  The message here is that arts education is important and is useful in the real world.

Although a bigger problem for me seems to be remembering not to fill the entire candy mold when I only need 5 4 stupid candy picks.  Damn it, I really am horrible at math.

Bootleg Orange is a little bit darker than Licensed Orange (and it's just now occurred to me that I'm not actually using Wilton Brand Candy Melts, but their Ben Franklin cousin.  Fortunately, I enjoy verbally undermining copyrights).  I assume this is the sort of thing that nobody cares about.

  Next super-important problem to solve: what does one do with spare candypicks?  The options are either bring them tonight or chuck them in with the candy-coated cookies I'm definitely not going to forget to bring to karate again.

 I did think about bringing the cookies with me tonight, but I figure there's a difference between my definition of nice and the sad, desperate girl with no friends who bakes all day.