results may vary (part two)

When I began to gather my favourite Halloween recipes, I didn't realize it would become such a sentimental journey down memory lane. Or more accurately, failure lane.

Those boxes of miniature chocolate bars are an important part of my Halloween celebrations. So when I found recipes which incorporated said chocolate bars, I was intrigued.




It seemed simple enough. Bake a layer cake. Place melted Snickers bars between the layers. Decorate top of cake. Easy.




Except that I didn't have enough miniature Snickers bars and used Mars bars instead (some call them Milky Way bars). A reasonable substitution, right? Basically the same except for a few peanuts. Well, apparently not. I'm still not sure exactly what went wrong. Was it the consistency of the Mars bars? Was the cake still too warm? Who knows? All I remember is that the "thick layer" of melted Mars bar mostly dissolved into the cake. When I cut the cake on Halloween night, the chocolate and nougat were gone. Vanished. Leaving only a thin layer of caramel in their wake. Needless to say, the cake looked nothing like the above photo.

Personally, I think these recipes should carry a warning for people like me. People who can't just follow a recipe's simple instructions. People who can't resist the urge to modify. That little M&M vampire should be saying something like: "Don't even think about substituting ingredients!"