My son has been really into watching Minecraft tutorial videos and playing it on my phone, so I may have to give these a try or make a cupcake version! Janine gives a full picture tutorial on how to make them so you can try it for yourself.

People who come to see the entries and wish to eat after the judging can chow down by making a $1 donation for a plate. The Food Bank also accepts monetary donations and it’s a great way for them to bring in donations.

My first year, I did a giant Twilight spam musubi. In the second year, I did a Hunger Games cake which I called ‘The Cake That Was on Fire’. Last year I did the Hunger Games Trilogy cake and this year I made two cakes!

The first one I did was for Wool, which was a self-published sci-fi book I found by chance last year while desperate for a break in the awful YA books I was reading. Wool has since exploded in the ~1 year since I first read it and if you haven’t heard of the amazing story of the book and author Hugh Howey, well, that’s gotta be a comfy rock you’re living under!

I started off by baking a plain ole yellow cake in a 9×13 pan. I cut off the curvy ends and then eyeballed it to make two equal layers. I frosted the sides for the pages.

Now, you may think that I chanced my measuring and had the top and bottom wrapped up in a fondant book cover, but I didn’t want to have the stress of being off by 1 cm and having a short cover. I simply measured with a piece of paper from the spine to the end of the front cover and then tucked the edge down under the bottom of the spine.

To create the look of the bottom cover, I simply applied little strips around the bottom of the cake.

You can kind of see how the two corners don’t match up, but I wasn’t concerned since I was going to be painting it anyway.

I had a bottle of Super Black food gel and painted it straight on.

I actually totally forgot to take photos of this as I did it cause I’m an idiot. I diluted food gel with some acai berry vodka, which I had purchased a long time ago to make Katniss’ flaming cake, but I pantied out and never did it. It smelled amazing though and I had to resist drinking some. I had read vodka was a great thing to dilute the gel with because the alcohol dries fast and I really needed fast drying food coloring.

I started by painting the bottom half yellow, then sponged on the orange. I painted some red on, but it wasn’t strong enough and only succeeded in making the orange look darker. Oh well. The black went on last and that was the most fun to apply. I even took a toothpick and scratched up the top right for the scratchy parts of the book cover.

Next, I worked on the letters, which were nice and simple compared to the complete freaking nightmare of the Game of Thrones ones I was working on for the second cake.

I painted them yellow then simply applied red, orange, and black with a sponge. The sponge I used was from my fondant kit and I don’t think it’s supposed to be used for painting food coloring on but hey, it was perfect for the job.

Here’s the top of the finished cake. I had first intended to just do the Wool letters, but it looked goofy without the author, so I had to put Hugh’s name on it. There was no way I was going to replicate the thin font used on the book, so I just cut them out freehand. Came out pretty good!

Here’s a look at the side of the book!

Here’s the final cake at the competition. It won first place for Most Book Like and tied with my Game of Thrones cake for People’s Choice.

I’ll post about the other cake soon, hopefully. I picked Wool and Game of Thrones sort of as an inside joke for Hugh Howey as well, since he’s always cracking jokes about his little imaginary feud with George RR Martin on his blog.

Hope you guys have enjoyed this cake. I really enjoyed making it and was really really sad about cutting it up, which you can view below:

Now, since my husband raises rabbits for meat, I’ve got a whole lot of rabbit at my disposal for cooking. I’ve stewed quite a few rabbits so far, making various types of hasenpfeffer based on recipes I’ve found online but honestly, they were just barely edible and after we ate it for dinner, usually no one would want the leftovers. It was a serious waste of meat.

The cookbook features two types of stewed rabbit, the 16th Century version and the Modern version. Because I had no Nicoise olives, I went with the 16th Century recipe and even then, I was missing a couple of things and had to substitute or omit.

Even with substitutions though, it tasted very yummy! I’d definitely make it again as it was a delicious rabbit recipe. I don’t know if you could make it while on your way to join the Night’s Watch, but it was tasty anyway.

I worked on characters all week, posting snaps on Instagram and put off doing Mario to the last minute because he terrified me. He’s so complicated! He has hair! And eyes! And a mustache and hat! Anyway, here’s my first cake journey of the year.

I started off by making a cake WAY bigger than I intended. Seriously, it was a monster. I used 3 box mixes and added pudding, cream cheese, and chocolate chips. You can see my rolled out blue in the background. My fondant skills are still progressing, but I did way better on this one than I did on last year’s cake.

A little bumpy and there were creases in the back, but I covered them up with stars and it was all good. Here’s a gallery of the individual characters:

And here’s the final cake:

I had intended for Mario to have his hand in the air, but it kept falling down so he ended up pointing at Yoshi, which is funny since Yoshi is giving him side eye like, “What did I do?!”

Here’s the side of the cake. My mom helped me finish the stars.

Full view of the cake! Something hysterical that happened: one of the dads at the party comes up to me and asks if I know a girl named Alice. I’m like, yeah I know her. He says, “That’s my sister. I took a picture of your cake and sent it to her and she said, “I know her!!”

Because I’d been posting the photos over the past week, she knew it was mine. Too funny!

My daughter at one point kept telling me that the ghost was “looking happy” and after a while I was like, “He’s supposed to look happy.” That’s when she put me in my place and said, “NO, I said he’s licking HAPPY!”

And what do you know, he is. lol

The cake all cut up. I gave everyone a half slice. My husband got 11 cards from a deck and each kid drew a card. The ace got to go after my son, then the 2, etc. They each picked a character and everyone was happy.

Except…

Awww, poor little squid! No one picked the little guy and he was left standing on the cake all by himself.

And here’s Goomba looking all grouchy about the melted ice cream on his feet.

My next cake will probably be for the Edible Book Contest. I think I’m done with Hunger Games cakes for that though and will have to think of something else to make.

The Goomba above is the first figure I made. I’m terrified of making Mario cause he’s so complicated but I’ll have to give it a go anyway.

More soon! (trying to practice posting from my phone to practice for Comic Con here! lol)

My resolve is almost immediately broken at the first table, which has twenty or so soups, when I encounter a creamy pumpkin brew sprinkled with slivered nuts and tiny black seeds. “I could just eat this all night!” I exclaim.

I searched around for a recipe to adapt and settled upon this one from Beyond Sweet and Savory. I couldn’t find butternut squash at my supermarket, so I just bought an acorn squash.

It tastes good in the sense that I can tell it tastes yummy, but since I’m not much of a pumpkin eater, it wasn’t really my thing. I remember trying pumpkin juice once and not really caring for it, despite having read how much Harry and the students at Hogwarts love it. I’m really more of a pie and cheesecake kind of pumpkin eater! I do have to say that the almonds went very well with it, though. I reduced the cream a bit in the recipe below as I thought it was a little too much.

If you try this with another type of pumpkin, let me know how it is!

You can see my cut out wrappers here. I used a plain template I found online and then added in the graphics and words to make my own Effie Trinket cupcake wrappers. I’ve uploaded them to my docs folder so you can download the PDF to make you own. When you cut them out, make sure you leave a little bit of white as a tab like you see in the photo. If you use an inkjet, you should probably take your inkjet sheet and make color copies so they don’t run.

I baked used a white cake box mix and added red food coloring to get a nice pink. And then for some really weird reason, they turned out orange! I was a little dumbfounded. I mean, how is that even possible?

Anyway, they’re pink on the inside:

Isn’t that just bizarre?!

I used some really amazing pink foil cups that I’d been saving for a special occasion, but never did use. They sell some at Global Sugar Art, but I think the 50 set is out of stock and you can only buy the bulk pack.

The orange was killing me…

Anyway, next up, I wrapped them.

I made a double batch of cream cheese frosting (the All Recipes one is fine). I had a lot of leftover frosting, but trust me, leftover frosting is WAY WAY BETTER than discovering you don’t have enough. I did this once while baking a giant castle cake at like 3 AM and wanted to collapse on my kitchen floor in tears.

This is the first Effie I frosted. I’d made the flowers out of fondant earlier using a bunch of different cutters. For most of them I used stars or hearts or little flowers. Very easy and actually fun to make! I used Wilton #133.

In the movie, her hair was a nice light neon green, but when I printed the wrappers it didn’t look light at all. Sigh, oh well.

This one was my favorite of the entire batch I made just because I thought her hair looked the most authentic. I had to refrigerate each bag before use so that they’re come out more “hair-like”.

Here’s a pink Effie with her golden flower. I was having serious lighting issues, so this looks a bit orange, but it was a nice pink in person.

Here’s Reaping Effie as she bubbles next to Katniss on stage about how lucky she is.

Here’s a rather miffed Effie angry at Katniss for what she did during her Gamemaker session.

Here’s another Reaping Effie, though I wish I’d taken a photo of the other one. I made two of each type of wrapper and this one had a not-so-puffy cupcake.

Here’s a group shot of my two favorite Effies!

And finally, here’s a big image of all of them front and back. Hope you enjoy!

I took some of them to work and the office loved them!

For some reason this photo just cracks me up. I can just picture all these Effies in the box chattering away non-stop about fashion and table manners and how stunning President Snow looks.

Let me know if you try making these yourself! I’d love to see them!

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This is not an image I took, it’s borrowed from the maker! Isn’t it adorable next to a dandelion??

Anyway, yesterday I finally got around to giving it a try. It was pretty easy to use, though I did have a few times where it wouldn’t come apart from the press and had to re-roll the dough. Other than that, on some of the cookies you could even see the imprint of the feathers! Amazing!

Here’s the first raw cookie after I removed the press. Looks pretty awesome, right? I used the sugar cookie recipe from the Sweethearts post.

Basically all I did was roll it out, smash the press in, remove it, and then cut around it with one of my circle cutters from this set. I got better at it as I went along. You can see the feathers in this one!

Here are the cookies after they baked. You can still kind of see the feathers on the one on the left! You can even see the detail in the arrow!

While I’m still debating spending a hundred bucks on a custom brand to make the “real” mockingjay crackers from Catching Fire, these are a good substitute for the real thing and make a great party item!

I’ll search my house for the bag of mail carrying the other unfortunate lost mold and hopefully give it away soon! If you can’t wait that long, be sure to buy a mold for yourself. Trust me, they’re worth it!

This is the official HBO drink, which is a blood orange soda that costs arms and legs. Sadly, the HBO Store no longer sells it and I called around to the various shops that typically carry this kind of stuff like Hot Topic or Spencer’s Gifts, but they didn’t even know what I was talking about. You can buy it on Amazon, but only if you like paying 40 bucks for a 4-pack.

And so, the next best thing is to make your own.

For bottles, I simply bought bottles of Sobe (and dumped them, because I thought they tasted horrible) and rinsed those out and removed the label. Using the same recipe as the ‘V’, all you do is dilute it by adding Cran-Grape juice at a ratio of 1-1. For labels, I used the front label found here and printed them out. To make them waterproof, it’s best you make color copies at Kinkos. Here’s a PDF for you to use for your own!

I simply cut them out and taped them on and done! Food for vampires. Of course, you could also just offer yourself up, but you should respect vamps that support mainstreaming.

Scarily enough, my daughter is addicted to V. I let her drink one and then suddenly she was telling me how she’d drank four. Uh oh!!