Halloween Jack O`Lantern Cake

   Flush with success from my  earlier Halloween cake I decided to make another. Since I'd already done purple and orange I decided to make a Jack O` Lantern cake. The frosting is my usual Cream Cheese frosting dyed orange and the cake is a yellow cake I dyed green, because green is cool and it makes it look like the jack o` lantern is rotten. It was little weird eating it, because we kept thinking the frosting should taste like pumpkin and the cake should taste like lime, but that's part of the Halloween-ness of it, right? Originally this was a bundt cake recipe, but I couldn't find a recipe for a two layer cake that used as many eggs so I added baking soda to the batter and baked it in two 9'' pans.

 I was supposed to mix nuts into the batter, but I forgot and had to put them on top of the batter. Which worked out better because if you layer the cakes right they end up like seeds in the middle of a pumpkin. The ones that toasted on top even had a pumpkin seed texture, so that's how I will type up the recipe. Mix them in or omit them, if you like.




              
                                                           

                                             Egg and Butter Cake  

1/2 pound butter                                           1/4 teas. salt
2 cups sugar                                                 1 teas. vanilla      
5 eggs                                                           Green food dye
2 cups flour                                                  1 cup chopped pecans
1 1/2 teas. baking soda                                                                    

    Cream butter and sugar well. Blend your dry ingredients together. Add 1 egg then a small amount of the flour mixture. Continue alternating ingredients until all are used up. beat in vanilla and green food dye. (if using) Pour into two 9" cake pans and sprinkle nuts in the center of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

     

                                                            Cream Cheese frosting

1 8oz package cream cheese              Yellow and red food dye (optional)

1 stick butter                                         1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

1 box powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla  

Beat cheese and butter. Add powder sugar (a little at a time until desired taste and consistency are reached). Mix in vanilla and food dye (if using). Stir in nuts (if using). Spread on cooled cake.

Here is a link to a printer friendly version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vi0fnYHdgM26XncdXXgWTBnXmeBBOpiVcnwsohXwca4/edit?usp=sharing

   In honor of Halloween Bats Bizarre is having a sale! From today October 3rd until November 1st use coupon code HALLOWEEN for 15% off your entire purchase.

                              Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

New Halloween Lights and make your own ghosts

Normally we don't buy more Halloween decorations until November, but when we saw these spider and 24' purple and orange lights on sale at Kroger we couldn't help ourselves. It looks a little busy now, but next year we'll either be in the new house or will try to find a better place for them here. The spiders are great I'd like to get some more after Halloween. The purple and orange are cool, but I wish they were more purple. Hopefully there will be a string of solid purple lights this November.

   How to make your own ghosts. These simple, lovely Halloween decorations are very easy to make. Most of the items are garbage. Mom came up with this design years ago, using some gauzy fabric she had left over after making curtains. The best part is the older they get the better they look. Right now we have four and plan to add more. She made a bunch of little ones using dryer lint for the head.




What you'll need:
 Tulle or sheer white fabric
 Newspapers/ handful of plastic grocery bags (preferably white)
one plastic bag (preferably white)
Fishing line
Optional: Glow in the dark paint

   Cut the fabric into a rectangle-ish (you could cut a big circle too) shape that's about 8 inches longer that you want the ghost to be about 4 1/2 feet long and 2 wide. Make a ball about the size of a head (most of ours are around 5 inches in diameter) out of the newspapers/ plastic bags and cover with one white plastic bag. Place the fabric over the head so that some of it hangs a few inches below the head. Tie fishing line around the bottom of the head. Optional paint a face on the head. Thread an embroidery needle with fishing line and use that to hang your ghost in a tree. The lighter the fabric the less wind they need to fly.

They are great for telling which way the wind is blowing. They are very easily customizable, too.            



 In honor of Halloween Bats Bizarre is having a sale! From today October 3rd until November 1st use coupon code HALLOWEEN for 15% off your entire purchase.

                         Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

Rain in Barbie's Dream Chicken House

We got a little more than two inches of rain this weekend and learned that the new chicken house floats. Or at least is so light weight that water seeps under the walls and puddles up before it sinks into the soil. With a chance of rain all week we knew we had to do something quick. The girls were walking around in water that covered their feet.

  Fortunately Mom just happed to have a thirty-three gallon trash can full of pine needles. We put a five inch layer of pine needles inside so the girls would have something dry to walk on. Now their feet are dry when it rains!
   
   Surprisingly they haven't scratched all the pine needles out. Mom thinks the threshold kept them in. I like to think it was because they liked the pine needles so much.


In honor of Halloween Bats Bizarre is having a sale! From today October 3rd until November 1st use coupon code HALLOWEEN for 15% off your entire purchase.

    Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

The New Chicken House

   We where out of cages, and the Surprise chicks were out of room. We didn't want to put 'Possum, Handful, and Amy's girl in with their parents because the peaking order is so horrible and we have a thing about putting all our hens in one house. Mom and I were trying to figure out what to do when it hit us: put my old play house in between the house and the garage and use the two 10'x6' fence panels to make a run.

                    The panels were going to be part of a second chicken house we planed on building, but didn't, because we might be moving soon and were afraid taking the building apart would weaken it.

    We've taken to calling it Barbie's Dream Chicken House, and have named the girl from Amy's brood Barbie.

   Here is a picture of the nest Handful made for herself complete with egg, which for some reason looks blue in the picture. 'Possum who is the same age as Handful isn't laying yet, but both of the Ameraucana girls took a while to start laying.

  The cats love it. Bird watching, particularly close up chicken watching, is one of their favorite things to do. And the chickens in turn seem to enjoy cat watching. Whenever they see a cat laying on the cinderblock or in the dirt near the pen they run up it and hang out. When they aren't watching cats they are usually ruining Mom's heirloom Amaryllises and Pineapple plants. The little flock is all together for the picture to the right. Possum is in front, Handful's facing her, and Barbie is to the right with her back to the camera.

   A couple of days ago when the cold front blew in Persephone, who's favorite place to hang out is the roof, jumped off the garage roof onto the play house and hung out in there while Mom and I finished setting up the light for the little girls. Before we were done Sephy was out. As you can see in the picture she was looking at the roof from the top of the chicken house so she might have jumped straight up onto the roof. We're not sure.



In honor of Halloween Bats Bizarre is having a sale! From today October 3rd until November 1st use coupon code HALLOWEEN for 15% off your entire purchase.

             Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!