Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

Vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream  and royal icing cobwebs We're all adults in our house now that Bubby's all grown up, but that doesn't mean we love Halloween any less.  We love trick or treating in a nearby town that is very festive, but after several years of doing this it was beginning to feel very repetitive.  So, we decided to have a Halloween party. We invited all of Bubby's friends and ended up with a group of about 12.  A nice fit for our house.  We decorated as best we could, although the windy forecast made it impossible to put up the inflatables and use the fire pit we bought for the occasion. But the inside of the house looked very festive.  Bubby and I were all decked out in witch and warlock costumes.  The party was a lot of fun! We served chips and pretzels, lemonade and other juices, pasta with meatballs and salad. There was a jack o' lantern full of fun-size chocolate bars like Snickers, Twix, etc. And there were Halloween cooki...

  Gluten-free "mummy" cupcakes One of Bubby's friends who RSVP'd that he was attending the Halloween party follows a gluten-free diet.  I wanted to make some treats he could enjoy and decided to make cupcakes. I didn't want to invest in gluten free flour, because I won't use it often. So I decided to get a cake mix.  Earlier this year I had success with the Nature's Promise gluten free cake mix, but it doesn't seem to be available in stores right now.  Not sure if it's been discontinued or if it's out of stock. And the other mixes I saw were so expensive!  The budget for the party had already been exceeded, so I turned to good old Betty Crocker.  A name you (think you) can trust.   Was I ever wrong!  Though the cupcakes baked up OK, the taste was absolutely awful. This even though I tried to elevate the taste by adding buttermilk instead of water.  But they were dense and dry, only fit to be thrown away.  Unfortunately I didn't real...