It's not a Piece of Cake

I'm a sucker for new seasonal food products when I visit a larger grocery store. This 'tempted and bought' package was for Duncan Hines Limited Edition Autumn Velvets Cake Mix. Red velvet is a favorite flavor for me and now there are many variations of that, including these double-packaged mixes of orange and brown. According to my food history research 'velvet' refers to the smooth texture of the cake crumb. Now most cakes are made from mixes and have a very consistant smooth texture, but in earlier days cakes from a recipe may not have been so predictabley fine textured.
When I planned to bake the cake as depicted on the package, with a layer of brown and a layer of orange, the references for other versions caught my eye. So from the website I found recipes for Autumn Velvets Spice Biscotti and Autumn Velvet Donuts. Both of these were good and a fun way to use the cake mixes.

Autumn Velvet Donuts

I've used this recipe with other cake mixes and it works well with spice cake mix. 
1 cake mix (18.5 oz)
1 egg
¼ cup melted butter
½ cup milk
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour ¼ cup melted butter in a large mixing bowl. Stir in ½ cup milk and add 1 beaten egg. Add cake mix and blend until smooth.
Spoon mixture into a piping bag or a zippered plastic bag with the corner cut off. Pipe into greased donut pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from pan immediately and cool on a rack.
For frosting, heat ½ cup of ready-to-use frosting in the microwave until smooth and dip top side of donut into glaze.

I was anxious to try my new donut pan, and the
Tupperware pastry tool worked great

It is much easier to have something to pipe
the batter into the pan than to try to
spoon it in.

Donuts come out of the pan looking very much like
traditional donuts.

Glaze always adds goodness.

Autumn Velvets Spiced Biscotti

1 package cake mix
2 large eggs
4 Tablespoons butter
¼ cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
½ cup toasted chopped pecans, walnuts or aliments
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Combine cake mix with egg, butter, flour, vanilla extract and pumpkin pie spice in a large bowl. Beat at low speed with electric mixer 30 seconds or until just moistened, scraping sides of bowl with rubber spatula. Continue beating at medium speed 2 minutes. Stir in nuts. Dough will be thick.
Place dough on baking pan and with floured hands, pat into a 12x4-inch log.
Bake 40 minutes. Let cool slightly. Slice log into ½-inch diagonal slices. Arrange slices on baking sheet and bake an additional 20 minutes. Transfer to wire rack and cool completely.
Soften canned frosting in the microwave oven until smooth. Drizzle on biscotti.

Batter patted into a flat log, it is
very stiff.

Baked the first time

Ready to bake the second time

Baked and glazed.
Ready to eat!