A cat cake....

Typically, when we celebrate during the Halloween season, we focus on All Saints Day and All Souls day. We will, of course, be still celebrating those two days this year and attending Mass on All Saints day for sure.

However - this year our two older girls, who are still at home, were attending a youth group activity that required them being a away all night. Noah was also considering attending this function but at the last minute decided to stay home. When Bethany learned of the upcoming absence of her three siblings she began planning a party - and since we were on the heels of Halloween she chose that as her theme.

She leaned towards the softer, more innocent side of the Halloween decorations and for weeks was drawing ghosts and bats while her little minions siblings colored them. On the day of the party, we were busy baking and putting last minute details on costumes and decorations with my contribution to the party being a cat cake, and I have included the directions for creating one here.

You begin by mixing your favourite cake recipe, scratch or boxed matters not. You simply need to make sure you have sufficient batter to fill two 8 or 9 inch round pans. (If using a boxed cake this requires two boxes.) Our favourite kind of cake is the white cake which requires egg whites rather than whole eggs.

I use the Wiltons Cake Release Product to grease my pans and as I rarely make round cakes I accidentally used too much so the picture below is of how much is TOO much, rather than the optimal amount. Why you ask? Well, the cake baked in this pan, crumbled like sand when I tried to move it from the cooling rack to the tray. As I have used this boxed cake multiple times and never experienced this before and the only difference was that I accidentally greased it too heavily - I think that was the culprit to my losing the whole cake!

Too much of the Wilton's Cake Release product: as it looked before I spread it evenly about the bottom and side of the pan. Next time I will apply about half this amount.

Once the cake is baked. allow it to cool. The cooler the better for cutting the required shapes. IN fact a slightly frozen cake is even better towork with and will produce less crumbs which can make icing much easier.

Using a sharp knife cut two rabbit ear shapes of both the top and bottom of one of the round cakes.

Then you cut one of these smaller shapes in half to create your cat ears.

Assemble your pieces as in this picture.

Ice the whole cake with your favourite icing. We love chocolate, but you can use (white) buttercream icing and colour it - or top it with coloured coconut.

I use a knife dipped in very hot, almost boiling water, to smooth the face of the cat. This is not necessary and is really a personal choice.

I bought large gum drops and cut two in half, using the upper half for the eyes (And ate the bottom halves!YUM!) Then I used a full one for the nose with small slices of black shoe string licorice for the whiskers and mouth. I toped the bow with fall coloured sprinkles and voila, one chocolate pussy cat ready to join the fun!

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