Baking Adventure: Portal Cake (and Happy Birthday to My Little Bro)

Hey, Adventurers! Happy 2014!

Apologies for the extended hiatus! It was much longer than I had originally anticipated, but I hope you all had a fun, safe, warm holiday season. My holidays were busy with family and friends, but I've also been making things that I'll blog about later. :) Be sure to stick around in the upcoming weeks!

You see, the end of November and early December always correspond with end-of-the-quarter craziness - finals, papers, projects, presentations, and all that fun stuff. In addition, there's Thanksgiving and... my brother's birthday!

Portal Cake

My brother's a big fan of Portal so this year, I made him a Portal Cake. That's right, the cake is NOT a lie!

Baking Adventure: Super Mario Mushroom Cupcakes

Happy Easter, everyone!

I have a super sweet treat for you today. Super Mario Mushroom Cupcakes!

To make these cupcakes, I just used boxed yellow cake mix and canned vanilla frosting that was tinted with different gel food coloring. Super easy! Be sure to overfill your cupcake cups a little (almost to the top) so you get a nice domed shape. One tub of frosting was more than enough for my cupcakes. I just spooned the frosting into separate bowls and added enough food coloring to get the right shade of color. You want to make more frosting than you think you'll need because it's really hard to make a new batch with the exact same color shade. For the spots, I just used different colored candy melts. It really can't get much simpler than this!

Super Mario - Super Mushroom

Super Mario - Super Mushroom Cupcake

To make the Super Mushroom and the Triple Mushrooms, I used frosting tinted with Wilton's gel food coloring in Red Red. The spots were made with Wilton's White Candy Melts.

Mario Kart - Triple Mushrooms

Mario Kart - Triple Mushrooms Cupcakes

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Food Truck

It's not everyday you get to eat the food of video games... made by the creators of the game... for free. So in honor of today's release of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I present to you: The Skyrim Food Truck!

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Food Truck

To promote the game, the creators offered a sampling of Skyrim's delicacies: Dragon Leg (Turkey Leg), Whiterun Corn (Corn on the Cob), and Solitude Sweetroll (Roll).

Skyrim Food Truck Sampling  Menu

And here's what it looked like!

Skyrim Food: Dragon Leg, Whiterun Corn, and Solitude Sweetroll

To be honest, the food wasn't all that interesting. It was actually quite bland, but I will admit, free food is a very effective promotional tool. I, personally, have never played any games from The Elder Scrolls series, but the food truck got me looking into the game and talking to my friends about it.

Skyrim Drink Cozy, Box, and Magnetic Bottle Opener

Along with the free food, promoters also passed out drink cozies and magnetic bottle openers. I was actually most impressed by the custom take-out box. Who needs a happy face telling you to "Have a Good Day!" when you can have your game title there?

Skyrim Napkin

They also had custom napkins but they weren't nearly as impressive as the box.

As I sat there eating away at the "Dragon Leg," I couldn't help wondering... Why can't more video game promotions be like this!?  I mean - who wouldn't want to take a bite out of a 1-UP Mushroom or taste how spicy the Superspicy Curry really is? And just imagine the possibilities with a game like Cooking Mama! The Skyrim creators were definitely onto something. Prior to seeing the food truck, I didn't even know The Elder Scrolls existed. But look at me now! Here I am blogging about it!