This Halloween, instead of carving a pumpkin, we opted to paint one instead! 

Our gym was hosting a pumpkin decorating contest, so we decided to participate.

Kyle came up with the design and drew it on the pumpkin and then we all painted.

I love Brooklyn's super concentration, as evidenced by her little tongue poking out!

Final product: an Exhausted Work-Out Man! We felt it was befitting a gym setting.

Even if we didn't win. We were very proud of ourselves.

And as for the cake referred to, a few days before Halloween, I got a whim to bake something. I pulled out my Bon Appetit Dessert cookbook and was looking for something involving bittersweet chocolate, as I'd recently purchased a few bags on sale. I just happened to open the book to the Halloween Candy Cake. As Halloween was the next day, it seemed meant to be! And my mom was hosting a little family get together, so it would mean others would help me eat this cake, instead of it sitting around and just tempting me.

Interestingly, this cake involved very little flour and no butter. Lots of eggs, though. Something like 6 eggs and a few yolks. What you see above are all those eggs whipping up together with some brown sugar and a little vanilla.

The dry ingredients consisted of a little flour and some roasted, unsalted peanuts which had been ground up in a food processor. The above mixture was dumped into the wet ingredients.

After baking the cakes in two 9 inch cake pans, I cut each cake in half, giving me four layers of cake.

Cake halves!

And then the fun part - the filling. 

It was peanut butter, powdered sugar, some butter and some whipping cream, all blended in a food processor. YUM!

The other part of the filling was this lovely mess of chopped up Reese's cups.

Mid-assembly.

Almost ready for the top layer of cake.

There it is....

And then some whipped cream icing, some chopped up nuts for the base, Butterfinger and Reeses Pieces for the top. Good to go.

Looking pretty edible!

The top view (plus part of my foot).

Our little trick or treaters (minus Wyeth who was supposed to be a pepper, but never quite made it into his costume). August was a knight - I had made him a leather coat of arms last Christmas and we'd planned for him to be a knight all year. He was everything a knight should be.

Brooklyn was a pirate girl - looking way pretty for a pirate.

Dorien was a pumpkin for about 5 minutes, after which he stripped off his costume and proceeded to be a Nuisance. He roared at other trick-or-treaters and generally made mischief the whole night.

Not that you'd get that from his grin, right? 

All in all, a lovely Halloween was had by all.