The Jack-O-Lantern

Fortunately, I have another Grandma story for you all. She is just one amazing lady with many surprises up her sleeve. Last Friday night, my Uncle’s girlfriend was in town visiting her family in Pacifica, and she came into the city to go out to dinner with us. We met at my apartment and had a couple glasses of wine before we walked down to Fresca on Fillmore street. Fresca happens to be my favorite Peruvian restaurant in the city. Anyways, we sit down and Grandma starts heckling the waiter, asking if he had guinea pigs on the menu, and all of sudden she yells, “It’s my birthday!” It happened to be October 21st and my Grandma’s birthday is July 18th. It’s not even close to her half birthday. When he came back she asked if she was going to get cake for her birthday, and sure enough, after our delicious meal he came out with tres leches cake and we all sang “Happy Birthday” to my 87 + 3 months + 3 day old Grandma. The guy at the table next to us was also celebrating his birthday so he and Grandma swapped birthday wishes. I guess when you are 87 you are allowed to do whatever the heck you want. Looking forward to it.

My grandmother didn’t even need cake…she very well knew that cake was waiting for us back at my apartment. It sure did add some ridiculousness to dinner though.

The cake that was waiting for us was an Apple Sauce Jack-o-lantern cake with cream cheese frosting. Mmm good. Let me tell you how I did it.

Apple Sauce Cake Recipe (times this by 2 because we are making two bundt cakes):

*Courtesy of my mom’s recipe box and I am not sure where she found it

• Yellow cake mix
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 T. cinnamon
• 1 2/3 c. applesauce
• 3 eggs

Combine the cinnamon and sugar and set aside. Combine the yellow cake mix, applesauce, and eggs together. Mix them for about 2 minutes on medium speed, or 2 minutes by hand. Grease a bundt pan and add half of the batter to the pan. Then sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar on top. Now add the rest of the batter to the bundt pan.

Bake at 350 for about 35-45 minutes.

Repeat.

Cream Cheese Frosting

*From Paula Dean on foodnetwork.com

• 1 pound cream cheese, softened
• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

Beat the cream cheese, butter, and vanilla together until smooth. Add in the sugar slowly until light and fluffy and creamy!

Once you have baked both bundt cakes, you are going to want to trim the tops to make them flat so that they will nicely sit on top of each other.

After you have trimmed, put a layer of frosting on the bottom bundt cake, and put the flat sides of the bundt cakes together.

This gives the shape of your Jack-o-lantern! Be sure to line up the ridges on the top and bottom cake.

Put your wax paper on your clean serving plate while frosting so you don’t have to transfer the cake after frosting it . Dye most of your frosting orange, a little white, and a little black and start pumpkin carvin’! But not carving of course–frosting!

I stuck 2 toilet paper rolls in the center to make the stem.

Isn’t he cute? And a lot easier Halloween treat if you aren’t ready for cake pops!