Sugar Swings! Serve Some: gamers
Showing posts with label gamers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gamers. Show all posts

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Pokemon Go Sweet & Salty Snack Mix - with Pikachu and Mini Pokeballs


Are you into the Pokemon craze like we are? The kids and I have such a fun time playing it.  What's not to love - super cute Pokemon characters, augmented reality, gamification and exercise!


We walk around catching Pokemon, hitting Pokestops, and battling in gyms - and bonus - we talk to each other about neat topics while doing all this.  It's actually a great way to do something fun with the kids (and something they like just as much).  

If you have kiddos all into Pokemon Go, then this cereal snack mix will be a hit.  It's sweet and salty and seriously addicting.

The Pokeballs are made from yogurt covered pretzel balls.  


Dip half into melted red candy wafers 


Add the rest of the detail with melted black candy wafers and use a round white sprinkle as the center


The tiny Pikachu heads are made with Corn Pops cereal, red and black sprinkles.  Yellow melted candy wafer was used to attach everything together and black edible marker for ear, nose, and mouth.


And because regular Pokeballs were not enough - I also made Great Pokeballs. 

You know just in case you have a really tough Pokemon to catch!


You can throw it all into a bowl and let everyone dive in....


OR serve in individual cups!


This sweet and salty cereal mix would make a great addition to any Pokemon party or if you need to restore your energy after a long afternoon of pokemoning!

PS In case you are wondering I'm currently Level 15 - 105410 XP and Team Mystic!

Pokemon Go Cereal Snack Mix
Ingredients
  • 5 cups of Crispix cereal
  • 1 cup of Corn Pops cereal
  • 2 cups of pretzels
  • 1 cup of raisins and/or dried cranberries
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/4 cup agave syrup
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • For pokeballs: yogurt coated pretzel balls, red, blue, and black candy wafers, round pearl sprinkles
  • For pikachu: Corn pop cereal, red and black round sprinkles, yellow candy wafers, black edible writing marker
Instructions:
  1. Combine 1st 4 ingredients in large bowl.
  2. Combine butter, syrup, brown sugar, salt in bowl and microwave 1 minute until melted.  
  3. Add baking soda and vanilla and microwave another 30 seconds.
  4. Add to bowl with cereal and mix well.  Spread onto backing sheet to dry.
  5. For Pokeballs: Melt some red or blue candy melts in small bowl in microwave in 20 second intervals until candy is just melted.  Insert toothpick into bottom of pretzel ball and dip 1/2 into candy.  Let harden 10 minutes. Melt black candy melt in microwave and add to a freezer bag.  Snip one small corner and pipe the black detail onto ball (use picture of pokeball as guide).  While black candy is still wet attach white ball sprinkle to center.  Do the same for blue great balls except use blue melted candy wafers and add 2 red lines on top of ball with melted red candy wafers.
  6. For Pikachu: Find the right sized Corn pop cereral for the head.  Cut 2 small ears out of the cereal for each head.  Melt yellow candy melt in microwave and add to a freezer bag. Snip one small corner and use it to attach the ears to the head. Let harden.  Use more melted yellow candy to attach red and black sprinkles.  Add mouth, nose, and ear detail with black edible writing marker.
  7. Add pokeballs and pikachus to snack mix before serving.  Store in airtight container.
Prep time: 60Assemble time: Total time: Yield: 8 cups of cereal mix

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Mini Fudge Retro Atari Joysticks



Did you know September 13 is National Video Game Day?? Actually it seems like everyday is video game day around our place - that's the activity of choice these days for my kiddos.  It's always a battle with screen time as my 11 year old could stay on all day if I let him.

I mean we had video games too, I grew up in the 80s, but nothing like what the gamers have today.  I even dug up our old Atari game system - wood paneling and all! Remember those old joysticks? They broke all the time and gave you hand cramps but they were all we had.  They also had 1 button.  I repeat ONE BUTTON.  There were not 10 different buttons that you could push in different combos to get the game to do different things - one button and the joystick was all we had.  Maybe life was simpler back then.  OK now I sound old!


Well I recreated those old joysticks in fudge form - to show my kiddos how good they have it now! They agreed eating them is way better than using them for games!


For the details on how to make 'em, head over to sheknows here!

Thanks for stopping by and have an AWESOME week!

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Minecraft Creeper Cake and Character Peeps Pops


Is Minecraft still a favorite game of your older kiddos?? It still seems the soup de jour for my 10 year old.  Last year I did a Minecraft Cake and Rice Krispie Treats and Minecraft was requested again this year as a birthday cake.   And because I can't resist a good mash-up, I threw in some Minecraft characters in Marshmallow Peeps form!


For the Peeps pops, coat bunny Peeps in some white chocolate or vanilla candy melt.  Once hardened add the color with some food gels in various colors.  I add a little gel to an art tray (only used for food).  To make "paint" add about 1/2 teaspoons of flavoring extract.  I used lemon extract.  


Then just paint on the colors to make the characters.  Minecraft characters are easy because they look pixelated so you don't even need to be an artist, just color in blocks!


Once you have the base colors on, you can add any accents (like eyes) with candy melt.


The Creeper cake is really easy.  Just bake up a square cake in your favorite flavor.  Add a crumb coat and using a ruler make even squares across the cake.  I used a knife to draw on squares (well as even as I could get them.)


Tint icing in varying shades of green, and just fill in the squares.  You can google a Creeper face to see where to add the colors.  Use black icing to do the features of the face (eyes and mouth, well I think they are eyes and a mouth!).  It really was very quick to put this together.  Buy black icing though, it's so hard to tint icing a deep black!


And there you go, a pretty simple Creeper cake and some Peeps Pops for your biggest Minecraft gamer.


What games are your kiddos into? We're always trying to find neat ones that also teach a little.  Minecraft is pretty cool as they do create some really interesting structures in the world.  A little bit like a 3D lego creation, but all pixelated.

Here is last year's Minecraft Cake.  Which is your fav?


I'm adding these to my Peeps Treats collection.  I've done a ton of these in the past and they are always lots of fun!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Minecraft Cake and Treats



So are there any gamers out there?? This post will probably only make sense to them.  I don't play Minecraft, but apparently this one is a biggie and super super popular with both kids and adults.  From my limited knowledge of watching my kid play - so I know what the heck they're playing - it's kinda like a pixelated building game, where you can come up with some really cool stuff (think blocks or cubes of all types of materials) in "creative" mode or try to not to lose your stuff in "survival" mode.  All of it in a 3D world in which you try to craft materials and build while avoiding mobs and other interesting characters. You can even do a multi-player games.  It's kinda neat to see my kids building together in a virtual game!  People have made some awesome Minecraft creations too - see a bunch here or even Game of Thrones in MC, totally amazeballs.

My big kid turned 9 last month (9!!!) and asked for a Minecraft cake.  There are all sorts of them out there if you do a google search.  Most involve making one of the characters and trying to re-create the building materials in edible form. I used a square pan and made a bunch of layers. 


The bottom is actually a lemon cake - I know I know in no way does that look like lemon, but it is since that's kiddo's fav flavor I just tinted it dark grey to look like stone (and detail piped with a little black buttercream). 


The middle is a red velvet layer piped with vanilla buttercream to look like brick. 


And the top layer is chocolate piped with green buttercream to look like dirt and grass.


The yellow squares are supposed to be blocks of gold (or my kids call it butter, "because it looks like butter mom" )


The Mindcraft characters are made from candy melt. And made to look pixelated by piping smaller squares of colors until they come together in a larger square.


It's a little time consuming, but the kid only turns 9 once! I f you don't know the characters here are some:

Left side: Creeper (the main bad dudes), Cow, Skeleton, Pumpkin


 Right side: Steve (the main dude), Pig, Ghast (kinda like a jellyfish that shoots fireballs) , Sheep (I know I know looks nothing like a sheep!).

And of course you need tools, that's a diamond sword (apparently the best tool) and an iron axe and another sword.


I just added the candy melt characters around and on top of the cake layers.


And made some more building materials from rice krispie treats.  "Dirt" blocks made from cocoa krispies, "TNT" blocks made from red tinted treats (detail with candy melt), and "sand" blocks made from plain rice krispie treats.


Here's all the sides of the cake together (note to self, practice piping straight lines!)


And a view of the inside!


And you get a cake that most most Mindcrafters hopefully will like!  My kiddo was impressed, so I'll take that as a win.  He's one of my worst critics lately!  (The only issue he had with this one was the sheep face and I should have used more diamond tools, apparently!)


Anyways, hope you like the birthday cake even if you have no idea what this post is about! I've been making the kids' cakes since they were born and the requests are getting harder and harder now.  I'm managing to keep up - for now!!).

I'm off for a work trip to Brazil this Sunday for a week.  It's a work trip but I'm hoping to have some time to enjoy the food and treats of the region (which is one of my fav things to do when visiting a new country!)  Have a great rest of the week!