Edible ‘Snack-arena’ sure to be a fan favorite (VIDEO)
My tenure with the Girl Scouts ended when I admitted defeat trying to earn a cross-stitching badge. And ornament-making time in grade school usually ended with my fingers glued together and glitter clinging to my scalp for days.
But during the past several years, I have discovered an inner artist I never knew existed until I started playing with my food.
I love edible crafting.
My delicious hobby began a few years back when a friend was leaving The Eagle and I felt moved to make her something memorable. I immediately thought of the towering Timpano from the 1996 movie “Big Night,” which has layers and layers of meatballs, cheese, red sauce, hard boiled eggs, noodles and salami baked inside a 7-inch-high, drum-shaped pastry.
I found a recipe from the New York Times that would take hours. But I did it, and it was Mama-mia-mazing.
My next project: Fourth of Jell-O. Again, it took a full day of red, white and blue Jell-O layering and chilling. My party guests nearly forgot to shoot off fireworks that year, so mesmerized were they by the beauty of that patriotic dessert.
My Valentine’s Day bacon roses also turned out better than I expected, and I’m considering a side business.
Just before the Super Bowl this year, I stumbled across a picture of a Snackadium, which used various snack foods to construct an edible football stadium. The one I saw was produced by Pillsbury and was gargantuan, with sub-sandwich outer walls, a guacamole field and bleachers filled with pigs in a blanket, pizza pockets, pinwheels and more.
I imagined a dramatic unveiling at my friends’ Super Bowl party that would make the other guests forget all about the non-edible field on television.
Then I remembered that the party would have fewer than 15 guests, so I scaled it down. But my Snackadium – constructed out of doughnuts, cheese puffs, toothpicks and a whole lot of determination – was a masterpiece. At least I thought so. I posted a picture on Facebook and feasted on the appreciative comments.
That’s all an artist wants: to be appreciated.
With March Madness upon us, I decided it might be fun to use my Snackadium building experience to construct a Snack-arena. I made this one bigger, gave it some Wichita State Shockers flair and constructed some rather sweet goals.
I even made a special trip to the party store to buy a single chocolate candy foil wrapped to look like a basketball, the piece de resistance of the project.
Although I had several of the items I would need in my kitchen already, I spent about $50 on supplies. My goal was to make sure every piece of the Snack-arena remained edible, so I used toothpicks as fasteners and melted chocolate as glue.
I also repurposed some items headed for the trash or recycling in my house. I built the whole thing on a Picasso’s pizza box that the night before had held a massive, 26-inch pizza. And I pinned pieces of the structure into some leftover packing foam my friend had at her house.
Once I’d gathered my supplies, the project took me about four hours, but that’s because I was experimenting with different infrastructures and filming each step as I went. Without those distractions, you could do it in an hour and a half.
The assembly was so much fun, it went by quickly. It wasn’t difficult, and my 10-year-old served as a willing assistant (though some of my sweeter construction materials kept mysteriously disappearing).
Below, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for making your own Snack-arena to serve during this weekend’s Missouri Valley Tournament or at an NCAA Tournament watch party.
Now you know
To see a step-by-step video about how to make your own Snack-arena, find this story on Kansas.com.
March Munch-ness Snack-arena
Two dozen large glazed doughnuts
Box of mini corn dogs, at least 25 count
Two graham cracker squares
Two miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Six KitKat wafers
Chocolate for melting (2 tablespoons of chocolate chips will do)
One basketball-shaped wrapped chocolate (available at candy and party stores)
One can refried beans
Quarter-cup sour cream
Four whole olives
Two cheddar cheese cubes
Two Monterey Jack cheese cubes
M&M’s in favorite team colors
Four bags of favorite snack chip in different colors (seen here: Cheetos puffs, blue corn tortilla strips, Wavy Lays, pretzel sticks)
Also needed:
Large piece of cardboard or other surface
Two boxes of toothpicks: one plain, one with fringe
Styrofoam
Small plastic baggie
Hot glue gun
Foil
1. The slab: Find a large, sturdy surface that can take hot glue. I used a 2-foot by 2-foot cardboard pizza box, which I got after ordering a 26-inch party pizza from Picasso’s Pizzeria in Delano. I cut the lid off and built the Snack-arena on it. I saved the bottom of the box and inserted the finished product inside for easy carrying.
2. The support beams: Heat up a hot glue gun. Find some Styrofoam, either left over from shipping materials or purchased from the craft store. (On my first project, I used Styrofoam. On the second, I used soft shipping foam. Styrofoam worked better.) Cut strips of foam that are about an inch deep and 2 inches wide. Place them into a 21x21-inch square onto the center of the surface, and hot-glue them down.
3. The court: Cut more strips of foam and arrange them into an 8x12-inch rectangle centered inside the previously constructed borders. Hot-glue those down to the surface as well. Then, cut foil so that it fits flat inside the court borders and glue it down as well. The court will be applied to the top of the foil later.
4. The glazed wall: I used large glazed doughnuts from Dillons and secured them with toothpicks, one-by-one, against the outside of the larger Styrofoam border. I stabbed the doughnuts through their bottom sections and pushed the toothpick through them into the foam. Continue until the border is surrounded in doughnuts, as though they were walls. If they feel loose, use more than one toothpick or secure each doughnut to its neighbor by threading a toothpick sideways, horizontally, through the two.
5. The court border: Cook mini corn dogs as directed on the packaging. Let them cool. Then, stab the dogs through the top, one-by-one, into the inner foam rectangle. Using toothpicks with multicolored fringe on the top adds a festive look. Again, if they’re loose, fasten them to each other by threading toothpicks through them.
6. The goals: Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave. Shave the edge off of one miniature Reese’s cup so that one side is flat. Spread a layer of melted chocolate onto the flat part and affix it into the center of a square graham cracker. Do this once more and set the two backboards aside. Separate KitKat bars. Spread a layer of melted chocolate onto the top third of the flat side of the KitKat wafer and affix the graham cracker to it. Repeat with other graham cracker. Let the two goals dry.
7. The end zones: Separate four more KitKat wafers. Smear the back of one with melted chocolate and set it flat on the foil, about an inch and a half inside the edge of the court border. Make sure one side touches the long side of the border. Do the same thing with a second KitKat wafer, setting it even with the first up against the other inside edge of the court border. A half-inch gap should be left between the two. Repeat on the other end.
8. The goals: Once the goals have dried, put a healthy dollop of melted chocolate onto the foil in the gap left by the two KitKat bars, Affix the goals into each of the little spots. I shored my goals up by building a little wall of M&Ms behind and in front of the post, using melted chocolate as mortar. Fill the gap behind the newly erected goals with two colors of M&Ms. I found black M&Ms at Party City. They were a bit expensive at $5.99 a bag, so I got the yellow M&Ms by separating them out from a regular bag.
9. The court: Open a can of refried beans and spread evenly onto the court area between the goals. Make sure it’s thick enough to cover the foil. I used about 1/2 of a can. Next, spoon some sour cream into a plastic baggie and cut a tiny piece off the corner. Squeeze the sour cream out of the hole to draw the three-point line, lane and half-court line.
10. The players: Spear a toothpick through the center of a cheese cube. Then, slide a whole olive onto the protruding toothpick. These are the basketball players. I used two white and two orange cubes and made only four players. Make as many as you wish. I arranged all of mine on one side of the court at various positions.
11. The fans: Fill in the spaces between the doughnut wall and the corn dog border with snack chips of various colors. I used Wavy Lays and blue corn chips on the long sides and cheese puffs and pretzels on the short sides. Arrange them as high as they’ll go without falling over either the wall or border, and position them so that they cover the Styrofoam infrastructure.
12: The ball: Finally, use a bit of melted chocolate to affix the candy basketball into the top of one of the Reese’s nets.
13. Take pictures: The tragedy of your piece is that it will soon be consumed. And all that work must be Facebragged about.
14: Time to snack: Put extra ingredients in bowls and set out near the Snack-arena. This will lengthen the amount of time your sculpture can be viewed and admired before it is devoured.
This story was originally published March 3, 2015 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Edible ‘Snack-arena’ sure to be a fan favorite (VIDEO)."