Devil Dog Strikes Halloween Party Cake: Pumkin Changes Into Midnight Moon; Get The Recipe

All right dogs, LINE UP! Reader can you guess which transgressing hound pilfered the pumpkin cake? Was it old dog, Sam or puppy Tao? If you've read previous posts, you'll remember that Tao's aka is El Diablo. Yes, it was the devil himself, caught red-handed, with paws on the counter and full muzzle in the cake. Perhaps it was fitting that the devil visited my kitchen as I baked party food for Halloween. The devil distracted me with his own dog hair he had shed across the carpet. Busy vacuuming, I had left the pumpkin cake on the counter to cool. El Diablo duped me into thinking that my little pooch was actually on the way to good behavior. Minutes earlier he had seemed to obey my "Leave it" command and ceased lunging at and biting the vacuum cleaner bag. But that gesture in doggie decorum was just a ploy to conceal his nefarious intentions. Satisfied that I was busy elsewhere, he struck at the cake.

My pumpkin cake was going to be frosted to look like a pumpkin. But now, once again I'd have to chant my life's mantra, "It's not how far you fall, it's how well you bounce." I'd have to come up with an alternative Halloween cake. And so this was the simple story of how my pumpkin cake turned into a midnight moon cake on Halloween. Click on "continue reading..." for the pictures and cake recipe which is really a recipe for pumpkin bars.

I had been looking for a new pumpkin dessert recipe. I knew I wanted to make a cake and decorate it to look like a pumpkin. In the cookbook, Recipes for Sweetened Dried Cranberries, I found a recipe for pumpkin bars that directed the bars be baked in a 15 x 10-inch pan. Naturally I assumed they'd bake just as well in a 10-inch, deep-dish pie plate. And I was pretty right. The batter rose up very round like a pumpkin and I was very pleased. I had made one adjustment in the recipe however, emboldened by my mistake with the pumpkin cookies in which I had forgotten to add the 1/2 cup of oil and they had turned out tasty anyway, I cut the one cup oil called for in this recipe down to 1/2 a cup. And I think it turned out more or less fine. The moisture from the pumpkin and the eggs lets the somewhat health-conscious chef get away with reducing the oil proportion...sometimes. The pumpkin bar likely rose higher because of the reduced oil, and this height was exactly what I wanted. What luck. So here's a picture of how it turned out and the recipe as it's written in the cookbook:

Pumpkin Bars

• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 cup oil or butter
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 -16 oz can pumpkin
• 1/2 cup nuts
• 1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries

Sift together dry ingredients. Beat eggs; add oil and sugar; beat well. Add pumpkin to eggs. To dry ingredients add pumpkin mixture and mix well. Stir in nuts and dried cranberries. Pour into a greased and floured 15 x 10-inch pan. Bake 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

Frosting

• 3 oz. cream cheese
• 2 Tablespoons margarine
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• Milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream together cream cheese and margarine; add vanilla. Stir in powdered sugar adding just enough milk to make a good spreading consistency.

So the pumpkin cake turned out well. But only minutes later, it looked like it had been gorged upon by a wild animal...and it had. "Not to worry," I reassured myself. "I'll just cut away the part where Tao's nose has been." And so I cut away cake until sort of a half moon was left. "Okay," I thought, "I'll make it into a half moon." And it was going to be a half moon, until my daughter found it in the fridge and cut out a piece so that what was left looked like an exact semi-circle. Yes, at some point every lunar month the moon does resemble an exact semi-circle, but it's hardly the spookiest of shapes. So I cut away some more, eating the scraps of course, which tasted very good. Finally I carved the midnight moon you see above. I used Wilton food colors to color the cream cheese frosting, and voila, my midnight moon cake was finished and looked way too good to eat. So we admired it and stuck it in the fridge. Soon it will make its debut at our neighborhood Halloween party.

As for El Diablo? Well, he got his, so to speak. While I lay down with my ill six-year-old and tried to get him to nap, I heard my 10-year-old daughter in the shower. She had told me she was going to shower and I had asked her to take Tao into the bathroom with her so he wouldn't get into mischief elsewhere. She did. What peace... one child nearly asleep, the other getting clean, and the puppy contained. I listened to the water run. Then it turned off. Then it turned on again, and off, and on, and off, and on. What was she doing, I wondered. I listened more closely as the spurts of running water continued for some time. Then I began to hear loud thuds against the glass shower doors. I heard a lot of splashing, and more turning on and off of water. Then more thuds, and all done in such a quiet way that I knew my 10-year-old was up to something.

As I lay listening, afraid to move and wake my previously cranky child, I figured out what was happening in that bathroom. Mi Diablito was getting a bath. Of course, what had I expected, put a 10-year-old little girl and a puppy together unsupervised in a bathroom and naturally both of them will get very wet...and thankfully, clean in the process. It was obvious from the thuds, splashing, and scratching on the porcelain that Tao was not enjoying his ablutions. But I figured the love of a little girl was washing away his sins and returning him to that blessed canine we call Tao. And so it was.

 

 

Comments

[Andrea Jackson]

Of course it helps that your little dog is so cute (as is the older one). Butter or Pumpkin cake wouldn't melt in his mouth. I heard of a dog recently who ate his owner's Tshirt! Maybe it had cake batter spilled on it!

[Cristie Hurd]

This morning Tao got into something less appetizing than pumpkin cake. I won't even guess what. I tried to ignore the stench but couldn't. By the time the kids were up, he'd been bathed...yes, he was THAT stinky.