The tournament is over. Which Cup determined the winner? Mushroom Cup? Shell Cup? Flower Cup?
In the race to get all the party decorations and snacks ready, I won. I was left with enough time to add extras to my already-extra party arrangements, such as crafting a dry-erase arrow spinner for course selection between facing off players.
A few minutes before the first guests showed up, I slipped a non-carcinogenic sheet of stickers next to the disposable cups, giving guests an opportunity to express themselves.
I laid out themed snacks and beverages on the kitchen table: stuffed mushrooms, chocolate treats from the Japanese brand Meiji called Chocorooms, star-shaped slices of cheese, a bottle of Fireball cinnamon whiskey, red and green salsa with tortillas, a bunch of small bananas (nobody was interested in those), and calamari. I crafted a pair of oval white borders to attach to the bowls of salsa to represent the edges of the shell item, but they ended up resembling toilet seats. I struggled to come up with healthy options that were on-theme and brazenly placed vegetables and spinach dip in the middle of the table, figuring my guests would be more appreciative of the wholesome bites than appalled by how I’d strayed from the theme.
There was no room for the actual centrepiece: the cake. It got its own table in the living room nook. I used Chef Dennis’ Ultimate Chocolate Mud Cake recipe, as Dennis looked like someone who actually eats cakes. Plus, who doesn’t love the superlative “ultimate”?
Here’s an overview of my cake-decorating wizardry: I found that inverted cake cones conveniently resembled windmill towers and used them as the base. For the blades, I used sliced pieces of hazelnut wafer cookies, fusing them to crossed Pocky sticks with royal icing. The only inedible part of the cake was Mario, who is shown launching off a ramp made of cake and graham crackers. Strips of sour rainbow belts secured to the graham crackers represent the speed boost strips from the game. I brought ultimate innovation with my fertile use of green sprinkles to simulate grass.
I tried marzipan sculpting for the first time. Luckily, I made them three days in advance, because the cows above were my third and fourth attempts. The first two cows were too droopy. Even cows four and five needed a piece of Pocky to hold their heads to their bodies.
Having baked fewer than 15 cakes in my lifetime (assuming you don’t count all the times Mom let me dump the contents from a boxed cake mix into a bowl on the stand mixer), this is easily the coolest cake I’ve ever made. The cake itself was tasty, albeit crumbly and perhaps undeserving of the “ultimate” descriptor. I’ll hold off on blaming Chef Dennis’ recipe until I have a few more cakes under my belt and in my stomach.
Here are further well-deserved glamour shots:
I improved upon last year’s print-out of Lakitu that I’d taped to the corner of the tv by swapping it for a 3D version made of polymer clay. The benefits of being a Craft Slut are having a wide variety of materials available. I can start a project as soon as an idea strikes, and shop for whatever is needed during production, as I rarely finish a project in one day.
After all that work, did the invited guests show up to enjoy the fruits of my labour? Almost everyone did.
All the guests stayed long enough to use the washroom at least once. However, not a single person commented on the temporary art I put up. I’m not talking about the carcinogenic stickers bordering the mirror, nor the avant-garde cache of toothbrushes. I am talking about the balloon knots in ornate frames.
Either not a soul noticed them, or a few people thought, “Well, art is subjective,” and chose to remain silent out of politeness. Between the roomie and me, we have six toothbrushes in two separate holders around the sink. A few months ago, Alexa commented on the toothbrush collection when it was only at a 2:1 ratio. I invested about $5 in extra toothbrushes in my failed attempt to troll Alexa.
She declined my generous offer to reserve one of the unused toothbrushes for her. Can you imagine having a personal toothbrush at a friend’s house? If she happened to get bits of Monty Mole stuck in her teeth, she could easily take care of it instead of waiting until she returned home. If I had offered “Your Own Toothbrush at My Place” as the prize for the tournament, reigning champion Daniel would’ve won. Instead, he won admiration, envy, and animosity from the other competitors, some of whom joined us online for an hour. The enthusiasm for my Karty spanned the Georgia Strait, with three of what Video and Arcade Top 10 would’ve referred to as “home players”. Davy, Maggie, and Zoée joined us from their living rooms in Vancouver.
The person who knocked me out of the bracket was Matt, with his indecorous, tactless selection of Mute City as the course on which to battle a deaf person. Mute City is a course based on the SNES game, F-Zero. As annoyed as I was, I was not verbal enough to drop any audible f-bombs when I rolled across the line in 8th.
Alexa, the toothbrush snubber, hurt my feelings by winning Moo Moo Meadows handily, reducing me to a (red) shell of my former self. Further degradation took place on the sands of Cheep Cheep Beach when Alexa hit that last ramp just right and cruised across the finish line.
It’s alright: I’m on an eternal quest for self-improvement.
If I could have invited any celebrity, dead or alive, to this Karty, it wouldn’t have been that bore, Dale Carnegie. It would have been this guy:
squaremeat.com 