Free Murder by the Slice by Livia J. Washburn Page B

now that the day was finally upon them, Phyllis was eager to experience the excitement of the children and parents who would be there. Most of the kids had been looking forward to this since the beginning of the school year.
    Phyllis had doubled her old reliable yellow cake recipe, added a little food coloring to make it a light orange, and had baked it in two Bundt pans and two foil cupcake baking cups. Of course, the cupcakes took a lot less time to bake and cool. One cupcake was for the jack-o’-lantern’s stem, and the other was for a taste test. It never hurt to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to put something in the recipe. Even Carolyn made a mistake on one of her flavored popcorn attempts. Phyllis had heard mutterings about vegetable oil when the result made its way into the trash.
    The cupcake was just right. To tell the truth, Phyllis preferred her cake without icing. A really good cake didn’t need icing, but a fancy decorated cake required a lot of it.
    In a large bowl, Phyllis beat powdered sugar with butter and shortening at a low speed until it was blended. She added milk and vanilla and beat that on medium speed until the mixture was smooth. She had to add a few more drops of milk to make it the right spreading consistency. She removed about one third of a cup of the buttercream frosting and set it aside in a small bowl for decorating the stem. Adding red and yellow food coloring to the remaining frosting and blending it made the orange frosting that Phyllis wanted to cover the cake.
    She had bought a nice decorative Halloween plate at the dollar store and she used this to assemble her cake on. The first Bundt cake went down with the flat side up. On the flat side, Phyllis added a small layer of orange frosting. Lining up the indentions, she carefully put the second Bundt cake flat side down on top of the first one. It was easy to then cover the cake with a thin layer of the orange icing. She didn’t want it too thick, since she wanted the shape of the cake to show through well.
    Phyllis took the reserve icing, added green food coloring to the frosting, and blended it into a nice leaf green. She peeled the foil baking cup off the cupcake and quickly frosted the bottom and sides. The frosted cupcake was carefully placed on the hole on top of the cake to make the stem. The frosting on the cake and cupcake would hold it in place.
    Now it was time for the face. She decided to just make a traditional jack-o’-lantern face using chocolate icing. Phyllis put water in a coffee cup and set it in the microwave to heat to boiling. She broke off one square of unsweetened chocolate and chopped it up. This went into a saucepan with a teaspoon of butter, and she heated it over a low heat until it melted. Removing the pan from the burner, Phyllis added powdered sugar and a little of the boiling water from the coffee cup. She beat this by hand with a whisk until the frosting was smooth. She added a little more of the boiling water to the icing mixture and beat it until it was the perfect spreading consistency. The chocolate icing went into a decorating bag with a medium writing tip.
    On a piece of scrap paper, Phyllis sketched out how she wanted the face to look. Using a toothpick she marked off the corners of the triangular eyes and nose, and the ends of the mouth. It was easier to fill in the small holes left by the toothpick than it was to remove unwanted icing.
    Once she had the marks where she wanted them, she piped the chocolate icing, making the triangles and filling them in. She was quite pleased with the end results.
    Carolyn came into the kitchen as Phyllis was putting the finishing touches on the jack-o’-lantern cake. At late as it was now, there was no longer any point in worrying about secrecy. Phyllis stepped back from the table where the cake was sitting and said, “What do you think?”
    “It’s very impressive,” Carolyn admitted. “You’ve outdone yourself, Phyllis. This is going to make my