Forums » Art & Creativity » Official Contest: Cooking 2024

What’s a birthday without a special something to eat? Treat the RPR to a special something for its 14th birthday!

To enter:
In this contest, you must bake or cook something. Post pictures or the recipe -- bonus points for both! Please explain in your post why you chose the meal, and how it relates to the theme.

Your entry must somehow be themed to fit one of these categories:

• The RP Repository
• Fantasy
• Science Fiction
• Science, Gaming or other Nerdly Pursuits

A cake with an RPR slogan in icing? Yes please. Your recreation of the “coney stew” that Samwise Gamgee prepared for Frodo while they were on the long path to Moria? Absolutely. Rock candy you somehow crafted into perfect d20s? Genius!

You cannot enter pictures of food other people created, nor post unaltered recipes made by someone else; ie something you got out of a cookbook or magazine. Make sure it’s truly your culinary creation.

You may use molds and other special tools, so long as they are in support of a larger effort, not just something you purchased and submitted. For example, if you were to simply submit a picture of a chocolate millennium falcon you made by pouring white chocolate into a purchased mold, you would be disqualified. If on the other hand you used the resultant chocolate spaceship as part of an asteroid-field battle themed scene cake, that would be okay.

Prizes:

• 2023 RPR tote bag (Real life prize - we’ll ship one to you) Totebags won in contests have some surprises inside them!
• 2024 RPR tote bag - (Real life prize - we’ll ship one to you) Totebags won in contests have some surprises inside them! Please note that I won’t be able to ship this until after the genre mascot art contest completes and we know what this design will be.
• Greater Wand of Epicness - Grants 6 months of Epic Membership
• Wand of Epicness - Grants 3 months of Epic Membership
• Oil of Epicness - Grants 1 month of Epic Membership
• Dragon's tooth - 5 extra permanent character slots
• Box of Rocks - Contains 5 random pet rocks, including a chance for special color variants only available via a box.
• Your Choice of Walrus Pick any of the walrus types - classic, fancy, dandy, mecha, sabretooth, admiral, rogue, wizard, necromancer

The first place winner will get to pick any one of these prizes. Then second place picks from the remaining prizes, then third, etc. There will be FIVE winners. However, there are more than five prizes so the fifth place winner still gets a choice!

Deadline:
The last day to post a submission is June 2nd

Ok so I'm gonna start us off with some Moussaka.

So, the way it ties in is because of a story that me and bestest best friend started. Between our characters. James spent a good amount of time making dinner for his complicated girlfriend, Thalia. Using her mother's recipe while she rested her swollen ankle. It was a touching scene and I love the characters so that's what I made. Though I think Thalia's mother might just yell my head off for how I did it lol.

As for the recipe... I'm not even gonna try. It has eggs and eggplant, red wine, salt pepper... And so much more stuff but boy is it worth the hassle.

and the inside of it.
It tasted pretty good.

Ok so I'm gonna start us off with some Moussaka.

So, the way it ties in is because of a story that me and bestest best friend started. Between our characters. James spent a good amount of time making dinner for his complicated girlfriend, Thalia. Using her mother's recipe while she rested her swollen ankle. It was a touching scene and I love the characters so that's what I made. Though I think Thalia's mother might just yell my head off for how I did it lol.

As for the recipe... I'm not even gonna try. It has eggs and eggplant, red wine, salt pepper... And so much more stuff but boy is it worth the hassle.

and the inside of it.
It tasted pretty good.

This week on nailed it, Crystie decided to bake a cake.

Red velvet cakes, with an attempted space theme (in which the black didn’t take in my food coloring)


Crumb coat


Cream cheese frosting and icey sprinkles


Decorations and candles! Gotta love that snowman right? 😂


Added logo because…why not use my crappy handwriting too 😅


Special thanks to my main squeeze Powdered Sugar. Thanks for being by me, and all over me, through this process 😂

I recreated the ramen from Ponyo!





I kind of tossed up whether I wanted to stay true to the anime or make it fancy. But it was a simple family dish and I decided to keep it that way

Also a question: Can we enter twice 👀 I was actually in the midst of preparing this when I got a second idea!

I absolutely love this contest and the nice things you all come up with!
However, what I really want to complain about:
Can mankind maybe invent technology to actually remote try these from the computer screen please?
They look so yummy!

The snow Monsters!!!!
I'm wheezing! Magnificent!

~That Time My Drink was Incarnated as Slimeonade!~
Blueberry Lemonade with Jello Slimes

A delicious treat best served chilled, with your choice of a straw, a spoon, or simply a deft slime-catching maw, whatever you prefer.

Ingredients

Approximately 1 heaping cup frozen blueberries

1¼ cups lemon juice, plus a dash (or a teaspoon, if you prefer) extra

2½ quarts water, plus approx. 2-3 Tablespoons

2 cups sugar, plus ¼ cup (see notes)
½ teaspoon salt


For the Slimes
1 package blue raspberry jello

1 appropriately slime-y looking mould



Fresh slimes!


A gathering of ingredients!


Blueberry compote.


A slime is escaping!?


Oh, phew, I caught 'em! That was a close one.


A delicious-looking glass of fresh slime lemonade.


It is indeed tasty! Look at those layers! It's a very shiny cup of lemonade with slimes.


Directions
Prepare jello slimes, according to box directions, in advance. Pour into the mold. Leave in fridge for at least 4 hours, until you're about ready to use them.
Rinse blueberries and drain the water from them, then add the berries to a saucepan/small pot with the extra water from the Ingredients list. Cook on medium-low heat (or somewhere between low and medium on your dial, or what have you). Mash them when they're soft enough to do so; I used a potato masher but you can use a fork. Add extra sugar from Ingredients, and the extra lemon juice, too. Let these all sit together and heat for about 10 or 15 minutes while you make the lemonade. If for some reason they come above a light simmer, turn temperature all the way to low. Stir from time to time while you make the lemonade. The liquid should become slightly syrupy over time. If you can avoid covering it, do so.
Add lemon juice and sugar to the pitcher or bowl or adamantium pot, or whatever you're working with, and fill with water to just over halfway between the 2-Qt mark and the 3-Qt mark. (This is some kind of country measuring, I mean, it's not the MOST precise. It's like 15 minutes being 'a good minute', you know...You can also use a liquid-measuring cup for more precise measurement.) Stir, add salt, and stir again. Pour a little to taste. Add more water, more lemon, or more sugar or salt, whatever you think it needs. If my recipe is to your taste, add nothing! Unless you want to add ice. That's what I would do if I didn't want to wait.
Chill pitcher/bowl/bucket full of lemonade, or get ready to add ice. Turn heat off of the blueberries.
When you are ready to serve the lemonade, give the blueberries a stir and take the jello out of the fridge.
Remove the jello slimes from their containment area the mold, and prepare a glass for transfer.
Pour lemonade, and then spoon about an ounce of blueberry syrup/cordial into your drinking cup, in a streaming or pouring motion. This will make a sort of layered effect in the bottom of the glass. Well, I used a glass, but whatever your drinking vessel may be, the effect will be pretty whether you can see the layer properly or not.
You can add your slimes now! I used about 4, but you can do a couple or half a dozen per glass, as you or your fellow consumers like them. The jello slimes will float, or at least, mine did.
Enjoy!

Notes
When I first made this, in the cup, I added the blueberries first - just the blueberries, basically - and then the lemonade, thinking it would be layered. Nope. That just stirred up the syrup and blueberries, and made the whole glass purple. I didn't take any pictures of this, but it was pretty (while not being quite as attractive, uniquely, as the layers). My reviewers said the blueberries were too much, and I agreed upon reflection, so I changed it with my next sample glass to just the spoonfuls of syrup in the lemonade. I tried lowering them down to the bottom, first, but it seemed to do fine with just pouring spoonfuls in roughly one place, so you can do that. Just use the syrup if you don't like mouthfuls of blueberries!
Also, for the slimes! I did blue raspberry because a berry lemonade sounded great, and moreso even because the anime that inspired this fine liquid is, well, one starring a blue slime. But, you can use green jello for a classic dungeon slime (like the ones in the Forohfor Fortress), or other colors for other critters. You could have a whole slew of dungeon slimes, like different ranks and specialties, or just the different elements of ChuChu from Zelda! Perhaps other shapes and colors would be nice too - yellow stars, pink hearts, purple squares, chaotic diamond emeralds, rainbow hexagons. Dungeons and Dragons parties may have never seen such a wonder.
And surely some adventurer gourmets would approve of eating the slimes! 🤭
Also also, I was told that the blueberries were not sweet. I was thinking that maybe the sugariness of the syrup was all rinsed off and they just didn't taste sweet to those with a less sensitive sugar-tasting sense, so I should leave them out or keep them to myself... But it's possible you could mash them more/cook them longer to keep the sugar in there. You could also just add extra sugar. That might work. Lol. The lemon juice was just so they don't get discolored and so they taste fresher, but I guess blueberries don't really get discolored like that. 😂 So maybe it's okay without it too.
I considered calling the recipe a few different things, like Berry Blue Lemonade, Slimetastical Lemonade, Berry Slimey Dungeon Drink... Those sorts of things. I have a talent, right? 😂 😂 😂
I experimented with this a little, but I'm sure you can fine-tune your recipe over time! The salt brings out the lemon's deeper flavor and interacts with the sourness and acidity nicely, but if you prefer less or none, that's okay too. Also if you want it to taste like an electrolyte drink, you can add more, but I'm not sure why you'd want that. LOL.
For the blueberries, I used some of them in a jam sandwich later that day, and the rest were bagged and refrigerated, and eaten later that week. With the slime molds, it's a good idea to practice a little before you take them out for your showier glasses of fancy juice drink. I had a mold with rubber bottoms for easier removal, but I still had to use a chopstick to circle round the perimeter of them and scoop them over the rim. They really didn't want to budge.... Except for a couple of them. 😉 It's possible you could use a solid mould, and it's also possible you could just wipe the outside of the mould with a hot wet cloth, and/or just dump them out, held on a plate, but I was scared to do that. I didn't wanna mess up the shape much. Perfectly imperfect little slimes!
It's possible that if you leave the jello for quite a while in the drink, it'll dissolve. I'm not too sure. Plenty of recipes say not to add acidic fruits to jello when you make it, as it'll upset the setup, but I'm not sure what the exact effect is when it's exposed for a while after it's jellified.
Anyway, I'm about through here. I made the jello. I made the blueberries (which I wash just because there are so many cases of stomach upset or disease spread through frozen fruits). I made the lemonade. I experimented. I made different glassfuls, which were tasted by my family. I used a bowl for the extra jello and served it up with whipped cream to some curious, hungry adventurers. Overall, I had a blast! There were those slimes that tried to escape. I got exasperated trying to find more clear or glass glasses, and just added the blueberries' syrup to the pitcher. It was pretty and purple-y. I didn't take pictures of it, either, alas. Well, it still tasted good. We did a little tea party for bored people. 7/10, would make again!
I'll humbly say that if I don't win, at least I think I did well. Thanks very much, enjoy the recipe!

As any good adventurer knows, an inn or tavern is a place of refuge and relief. A place to collect your thoughts and gain back those spell slots. A beacon in a small town or safehaven of solace in the middle of some dark woods, which is weird, because that wasn’t there when you came by the first time… And the ruler of these domestic domains? Why, the innkeeper of course. Master of their craft, filling the bellies and rejuvenating the spirits of wary adventurers. You and your party members ever grateful for the wine and ale, but more importantly, the bread and stew that fortified your bodies and minds. But that stew or soup was different at every tavern, all the inns having their own house blend. Why is that? Because as every good tavernkeep knows, the best stews are made with simply the scraps of the kitchen. Anything leftover tossed into the pot to make a rich broth and filled with an assortment of root vegetables from the grounds outside and herbs found in that one guy’s backpack, best not to ask. But I, innkeeper at Khimera Moon Inn, am going to show you one of those very recipes. Just don’t expect any measurements, we don’t do that here.

First! The stock!
I keep a sack of vegetable scraps in my enchanted ice box. This time around, I have onion skins and ends, carrot ends, celery leaves and roots, asparagus ends, and leek leaves. I also happened to have a chicken spine and some chicken bones. That’s real luck! If you wanna be fancy, you can roast your bones, but I have a hungry, young adventuring party coming in and they’ll want to eat soon, so I toss it in the pot, fill with water, season to your liking. I also throw in a halved garlic head, keeps the vampires away. Salt and pepper it to taste, but I don't like to add too much in the way of salt if I'm using it in a soup or stew, and in this case, I did, so minimal salt! More will be added later!



Let your stock simmer on the stove for up to one hour, but to really get a deep flavor and draw everything out of your bones and vegetable scraps, six hours is best! Once its been simmering for that time, you'll want to strain your stock, either with a spider (the kitchen tool, not those menaces outside) or a colander into another large pot. I prefer using the spider to keep everything in one pot.



Onto the soup!
I like to use onion, celery, and carrots as my base of aromatics. Pretty standard, but use what you know! Soups and stews are regional, so using what you have is most important, especially when it comes to avoiding food waste. I had an over abundance of carrots from a harengon hootenanny, so I used those in both the stock and soup. I sauté the vegetables in butter with salt and pepper, I then throw in a healthy amount of garlic. Once those soften some, I add some sort of poultry. Today was chicken, some days its turkey, other days its a bandit from the Kenku gang down the road, they really need to keep outta my grain if they know what's good fo-... Moving on! There's no need to cook your poultry all the way through here, it will cook further in the stock later!



When everything is in the pot, that's when I like to add my seasonings and herbs. Fresh herbs are good, but dry is fine and what I had on hand this time. There are magical benefits to herbs and I will list them below the image. I went very minimal in spices and did more in the way of herbs to keep a clean but earthy flavor to the soup. Season as you see fit, again, no measurements. Cooking is with the heart! It's baking that's the science, something for wizards to busy themselves with.

• Oregano: Protection and can induce prophetic dreams. Find that big bad!
• Parsley: Brings good luck, which for some reason, adventurers put a lot of stock into.
• Rosemary: For wisdom and spirit warding. Keep the ghosts away! It also can amplify the herbs also in the pot!
• Thyme: Purification and health, which we all need from time to time.
• Bay Leaves: Abundance and prosperity. Get all the loot!

Adding in the stock, I do enough just to cover what's in the pot and a little more. In my case, I used about five to six cups. I added my bay leaves then. I also added in a sack of frozen vegetables I got from some ice wizard. They were like fresh! Again, just using what was on hand. Once it's been simmering for about fifteen minutes, I remove the bay leaves, toss in egg noodles. Once those are ready, I finish it with some cream and serve!



This can be served with bread and cheese on the side, but I enjoyed it with a cold mug of water. Warming on a rainy day and after beating a band of goblins on the road, or those gods damned Kenku... Anywho! I hope you can enjoy your own tavern style soup when the mood strikes. It can always be more simple than this or as complicated as you want, but the important thing is... It feeds an adventuring party or maybe just your friends and family. Enjoy!

You know what? It's been way too long since we've had any acknowledgement of the true hero of Epic Week. Neigh, of RPR itself.

Who's always been hard at work supplying the warriors of Epic Week, at sometimes great peril to itself? Who's always there to help us find our own butts when we forget just what the heck the URL of our latest character was? Who almost, positively should not exist, let alone be able to neigh, but yet somehow has stampeded its way into our collective hearts, as confused as we may all be about it?

You know who.



I've chosen to depict our saviour in cake form, having a little bit of relaxation time in Forohfor Castle after all of its hard work careening through the halls at ludicrous speed with weaponry this past Epic Week.




And as for what's inside...



Wait, what's that?



How did the bouncy balls get in there???

Doubutt is a funfetti cake - using this tasty recipe - with a bubblegum swiss meringue buttercream, covered in fondant that I managed to dye without turning my hands the colour of the rainbow, and is filled with an assortment of bubblegum and sprinkles. No real Doubutts were harmed in the making of this cake.

Oh my god what a thing of beauty 😭😭😭😭

Holy horse!

Welp that just swept all the other entries out of the water 😂 that is amazing!!

Duobutt, my favorite official RPR character of all, oh my gosh, yes, that is absolutely the best right there! I love it!

Congrats to our winners!

1. Dragonfire
2. Kirasha
3. Crystie78
4. Claine
5. Shinyrainbowlithogra

Congratulations!

I'm so stoked! Thanks for hosting this again this year. I had a lot of fun making my dish.

Edit: congratulations to the other winners 😅 everyone's dishes looked great