4 Delicious Video Game Desserts for Your Next Party

Photo: Askanam

• ¾ cup softened butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• 2½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons milk
• food coloring

1. Start off by mixing the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Then in a separate, large bowl, blend the butter and sugar until it’s creamy and smooth. Yummm. Then beat in the eggs and vanilla.

2. Add the dry mixture from bowl no. 1 and mix until you’ve got something resembling cookie dough. Once it’s blended, use your hands to make the dough into a big, smooth ball, and wrap that sucker in cellophane. Pop it in the fridge and let it chill for at least an hour.

3. While it’s chilling, you can start making the icing! If you’d rather use fondant, go ahead. You can find fondant at most grocery stores. I prefer making my own icing because I think it tastes better.

All you’ll need to do is mix together powdered sugar and milk, slowly adding more of each until you get the consistency you like. Then split the icing up into several different Ziplock bags (one bag for every color you want). Add a few drops of food coloring to each bag (unless you want white), seal the bags and squish together the dye and the icing. Go ahead and experiment with your color balances. Once you’re happy with your colors, set aside for now.

4. Once the dough’s good and cold, preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out the dough on a big floured surface (protip: if you have a sweet tooth, use powdered sugar instead of flour). This is where the shaping comes in! If you don’t happen to own Pac-Man cookie cutters, you can use the rim of a glass to make circles and then use a knife to cut out a wedge. For the ghosts and fruit, use the knife to draw the shapes you want. Don’t worry about making them perfect; the icing will make them beautiful!

5. Place the cookie shapes on a cookie sheet, stick them in the oven, and wait about 7 minutes or until they’re lightly golden. Let the cookies cool for about 10 minutes. Then bust out your icing, cut a teeny tiny hole in the corner of each bag (you can always make the hole bigger), and ice away!

(Based on a sugar cookie recipe at AllRecipes.com)

So innocent and delicious… Source: Still

• ¼ cup butter
• 3½ cups Rice Krispies
• 1 bag (8 oz.) mini marshmallows
• yellow food coloring
• mini chocolate chips
• almonds or candy corn (for beaks)
• mini pretzels
• buttercream frosting (optional)

In Fable, you can make your character more or less evil by performing good or bad deeds, and eating live chicks is considered pretty evil. Don’t worry, this version is vegetarian, but they’re just as good at getting you into the Temple of Shadows.

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Once it’s mostly melted, begin slowly adding the marshmallows. Do not stop stirring!

2. Once the marshmallows are melted, add a few drops of yellow food coloring (to preference), and stir so it’s uniform. Remove from heat and slowly mix in the Rice Krispies.

3. Wait about 10 minutes for the mixture to cool, then spray nonstick cooking spray straight onto your hands. Reach into the (still warm) sticky mixture and begin forming the Rice Krispies into little chick-shaped ovals. Then set them onto a piece of parchment paper.

4. Decorate! You can use chocolate chips for eyes, half-almonds or candy corn for beaks, and pretzels for little feet. If you like, mix a little bit of yellow dye into the frosting and use a plastic bag with a tiny hole to create little feathers on your bird.

5. Enjoy your newfound evilness.

(Based on a recipe at Lilluna.com)

Source: Snack or Die

• 1 box cake mix + required ingredients
• ¾ cup cream cheese frosting
• 1 bag M&Ms
• 1 bag M&M Minis
• Candy melts, any color

These cake balls are all about the decoration, so the baking part is pretty straightforward. It’s also fun to try with younger kids (just like the Katamari video games!)

1. Start by following the instructions on the box of cake mix. Don’t worry about the size or shape of the pan. If you have one of those fancy cake-pop makers, go ahead and make cake pops how you would ordinarily (minus the sticks) and skip to #3. If you don’t have a cake-pop maker, keep reading.

2. Once the cake is baked and cooled, use your (clean) hands to crush up the cake in a large bowl. Then add the cream cheese frosting and squish it all together. Once it’s mixed up, clump the mixture into little walnut-sized balls and set aside on a piece of parchment paper. Then pop them into the freezer for at least 15 minutes.

3. Take the candy melts and microwave them one color at a time, stirring every 30 seconds until they’ve melted to create a thick, brightly colored mixture. Take a couple spoonfuls of each color and place them in separate frosting bags for later. (Ziplock bags work fine, too.)

4. Take out your chilly cake balls and, one at a time, roll them in the melted candy of your choice. The Prince of All Cosmos uses lots of different colored Katamaris, so the sky is the limit!

Before the cake ball gets too soft, scoop it out of the candy with a spoon and put it back on the parchment paper. Repeat with all your cake balls, using different colors as preferred.

5. Take your bags of melted candy melts (be sure to cut one corner off if you’re using Ziplock bags) and squeeze little blobs of the candy at even intervals around your cake balls. Then press M&Ms into the blobs and hold them for a few seconds to ensure that they will stay in place.

If you want to do a second layer of M&Ms, repeat the process by squeezing tiny dots of candy melt onto the M&Ms and applying M&M Minis.

6. Let the cake balls sit for 15 minutes so the candy can harden. Enjoy!

(Based on a recipe at Snack or Die)

• 1 box of chocolate cake mix + required ingredients
• ¾ cup melted butter
• 1 can coconut pecan frosting
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• ⅔ cup granulated sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• ⅔ cup cocoa
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ⅓ cup water
• 2 cans vanilla frosting
• 8 maraschino cherries
• 1 white candle

No compilation of nerd noms would be complete without the famous Black Forest Cake from Portal. The recipe can actually be found within the game, though it has a few inedible additions (such as “unsaturated polyester resin” and a “cordless electric needle injector”). The creators of the vlog Feast of Fiction based their recipe off of the original in the game, so that’s the one I use here. The vlogger Nerdy Nummies made her own version with a big pink heart in the middle.

If you want to be really tricky, find a cake-shaped  cardboard box and skip ahead to the decoration (cake, after all, makes for a great lie).

1. This recipe actually combines a box mix and a scratch mix (strangely enough). So, start off by making the chocolate cake from the box, following normal instructions. Pour the mix into a floured round cake pan and toss it in the oven!

2. Cream together the melted butter and the granulated sugar, then mix in the eggs (one at a time) and vanilla extract. I use an electric mixer for this because I have no upper body strength.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Then pour this dry mixture into the first bowl. While mixing, add the water to ensure a smooth batter.

4. Pour the batter into two round, floured cake pans (same size as the first cake mixture) and bake at 350° F for 30-40 minutes.

5. Chocolate flakes! You can buy chocolate pre-shaved, but if you’d like to make your own simply melt the chocolate chips in the microwave (or over a double boiler) and pour them onto wax paper. Put the chocolate in the freezer until it hardens. Then take it out and crush it up into little bits. The Feast of Fiction vloggers use a bench scraper to make this process simple.

6. When the cake is done, carefully slice off the tops of all three layers to make them as flat as possible. Then, with the box mix in the middle, use the vanilla frosting and stack them up! (Save a bit of frosting for step 8.) Then cover the entire thing in the coconut pecan frosting. Frost frost frost!

7. With your hands, cover the entire cake in chocolate flakes. They will get everywhere. This is normal. Messy baking is the best!

8. Scoop your remaining vanilla frosting into an icing bag (or a Ziplock with one corner cut off) and make eight evenly-spaced frosting dollops in a circle and one in the center. Place a single, stemless Marachino cherry on top of the first eight dollops. Then stick a long, plain white candle into the center dollop.

9. Light the candle and enjoy! This was a triumph.

(Source: Feast of Fiction)