I don’t usually do too much for Halloween – it’s a pretty busy time and I generally save my culinary craziness for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
This year, after watching too many cooking shows at night during supper, I decided I was going to take the plunge and make some dessert type things. I settled on cake pops, with the idea that I would give them to friends and waitstaff at my favourite restaurants (I’m friendly with owners of several nice lunch time eateries), and enjoy a few small little treats myself. I thought I’d even pawn some off on my boyfriend for him and his friends, hoping for a best girlfriend of the year nomination.
Since it is a spooky time of year, I thought I would make ‘eye ball’ and ‘spider’ cake pops. In preparation I made some lovely semi-sweet chocolate ganache and stayed up late night before last making vanilla buttercream frosting. I had my boyfriend try it and he said it was one of the best things he’s ever tasted.
So to-day I was going to make the cakes – a yellow one for the ganache and a dutch-chocolate one for the vanilla buttercream.
I was ALMOST done adding the flour to the creamed butter and sugar for the yellow cake when… I saw something in the flour. Upon closer inspection it was an insect wing.
I was just about out of cake flour and so bought a new box yesterday and made my dry ingredient mix. Well, I guess it must have been contaminated – it happens sometimes, it’s not the first time I’ve seen it – but I have a lot to do, no more cake flour (I threw it all away), and time is ticking away.
So instead of being able to post pretty pictures of bloodshot eyeball cake pops and black-widow spider pops, I’m stuck with six cups of the most sublime vanilla buttercream frosting and four and a half cups of chocolate ganache.
I guess I’ll just get a mix, make sure there’s no wings, and bake a cake from a box so I can at least enjoy the frosting! Halloween treats were not meant to be this year.