Four foods from 2000s TV shows you can make at home
By: Guinevere Govea
Tags: Food, TV Shows, Baking, Cooking, Cartoon

Four foods from 2000s TV shows you can make at home Guinevere Govea Follow May 12 · 6 min read

If your mouth has ever watered over a 2-D cartoon krabby patty, you are not alone.

Sitting in front of the TV and longing for a bite of an imaginary angel surprise cake was my favorite pastime as a kid. As it turns out, I was not the only one. A lot of 2000’s kids wanted to eat cartoon food, and I now know that almost all of those 2-D cartoon treats taste delicious in real life.

“All of the old-looking Disney cartoons have really good-looking food,” said Anna Pickett, a 21-year-old UT Austin student and Disney enthusiast from Dallas. “In ‘Aristocats,’ when that mouse dunked a cracker in milk, I was like, ‘Ah, I want that.’”

Pickett is not the only one that wanted to eat cartoon food as a kid. Alexis Williams, also 21 and from UT Austin, thought the same thing. One of her dreams was to eat a glow-in-the-dark krabby patty from “Spongebob,” she said.

“Everything (on screen) looked so scrumptious,” Williams said. “How did we not notice it at the time?”

With more people — 51% in total, according to Statista data — watching shows via streaming services during quarantine, it is easy to see why the appeal for cartoon food is growing.

Cooking buff Catherine Palacios from Edinburgh, Texas, says that cooking her favorite foods from TV and video games have been a great way to pass the time during social distancing.

“The most important part (about cooking) is making something that you’re really excited about,” Palacios said. “It’s been a really good de-stressor.”

So, if you have ever longed to make a wish on a magic muffin or eat a krabby patty from The Krusty Krab, recipes from myself and the popular YouTube channel Binging with Babish have you covered. Here are four imaginary foods from “Spongebob Squarepants,” “Kim Possible,” “The Fairly Oddparents” and “Max and Ruby” that you can finally eat in real life.

Angel Surprise Cake with Raspberry Fluff Icing from “Max and Ruby.” Photo by Guinevere Govea.

1. Ruby’s Angel Surprise Cake with Raspberry Fluff Icing from “Max and Ruby”

In the episode “Bunny Cakes” from the 2002 TV Show “Max and Ruby,” Ruby makes an angel food surprise cake with raspberry fluff icing for her grandmother. This cartoon cake may look scrumptious on screen, but in real life, it’s good enough to eat in one sitting.

This spongy angel food cake filled with fresh strawberry filling and topped with fluffy cream cheese raspberry icing will make all of your childhood cartoon-cake-eating dreams come true. The only thing missing from this cake replica is the paws of the bunny chef herself, Ruby.

There was no specific recipe online for Ruby’s cake, so I configured this one on my own, inspired by Kraft’s Wave Your Flag Cheesecake recipe for the icing and Just a Pinch’s Grandma Surprise Cake for the cake.

Ingredients

For the cake:

1 prepared angel food cake

1 small box strawberry Jell-O

1 pint frozen strawberries

For the icing:

2 pkg. (8 oz each) cream cheese, softened

¼ cup sugar

1 container Cool Whip topping, thawed

1 tbsp raspberry puree

Pink and yellow food coloring

Colored sugar paper

Directions

Cut off ¼ to ½ inch off the top of the angel food cake.

Hollow out the insides of the cake, leaving a half to quarter inch-thick wall on the outside and inside. Put the insides of the cake in a separate bowl.

Mix the strawberry Jell-O according to the directions for the hot water, and for the cold water, use 1 pint of frozen strawberries.

Pour strawberry Jell-O over cake crumbs. Mix well.

Once coagulated, pour strawberry mixture into the hollowed-out Angel food cake.

Replace top.

For the icing, beat the cream cheese and sugar in a large bowl until blended. Stir in the cool whip.

Mix in pink food coloring and 1 tbsp of raspberry puree to 2/3 of the icing.

Add yellow food coloring to the remaining 1/3 of the icing.

Ice cake with pink icing and pipe rosettes on top with yellow icing.

Cut star shapes out of sugar paper and place on the sides of the cake.

Refrigerate for 1 hour before serving.

‘Naco’ from “Kim Possible.” Photo by Guinevere Govea.

1. The ‘Naco’ from “Kim Possible”

This next recipe comes from the YouTube channel Binging with Babish, a popular channel that re-creates foods from movies and television.

In 2019, Babish re-created The Naco from the 2002 animated show “Kim Possible.” According to its animated inventor Ron Stoppable, The Naco is a nacho-taco hybrid composed of nachos in a flour tortilla.

Creamy nacho cheese combined with slightly spicy taco beef sit on a bed of homemade crunchy tortilla chips to make this dish. The Naco might not be great for your cholesterol, but it is certainly great for the taste buds.

You can find the recipe here (scroll to the section that says “Naco Redemption”):

Magic Muffin from “The Fairly Oddparents.” Photo by Guinevere Govea.

1. Magic Muffin from “The Fairly Oddparents”

There is no online recipe available for this monstrosity, and for good reason.

The magic muffin from the 2001 show “The Fairly Oddparents” gives its owner one wish for every bite. The only catch, however, is that the muffin tastes awful.

I do not recommend trying this sinful creation yourself, but if you would like to have the taste of pickle juice, fish sauce and sugar paper in your mouth for hours after you have had a bite of this magic muffin, then by all means, go for it.

Ingredients

1 box muffin mix (any brand) and ingredients on box

1 yellow sugar sheet OR 1 white sugar sheet and liquid yellow food coloring

½ tsp fish sauce

½ tsp mustard

½ tsp pickle juice

½ tsp enchilada seasoning

Purple gel food coloring

1/4 tsp peanut butter

Directions

Prepare the muffin mix according to the directions on the box. Reserve ¼ cup of muffin batter to make ‘magic.’

Stir in fish sauce, mustard, pickle juice, and enchilada seasoning to ‘magic’ batter. Stir food coloring into batter until it is bright purple.

Scoop normal muffin batter and satanic magic muffin batter into a muffin tin lined with teal cupcake liners. Bake according to box directions.

Once muffins are done, set aside to cool.

Cut star shapes out of yellow sugar paper OR white sugar paper painted yellow with food coloring and attach to the magic muffin with peanut butter.

Bite (good luck) and make a wish!

Krabby Patty from “Spongebob Squarepants.” Photo by Guinevere Govea.

1. Krabby Patty from “Spongebob Squarepants”

If you have ever wanted to eat a krabby patty from the Krusty Krab, it is surprisingly simple to make. Spongebob made this entrée using many basic burger staples, like pickles, onions, tomatoes, cheese and lettuce.

Binging with Babish created the recipe for this cartoon staple. It is one of Babish’s simpler recipes, but the patty in this burger, made from ground chuck steak and short ribs, make the otherwise basic dish into an umami-filled adventure.

The recipe is available here:

https://www.bingingwithbabish.com/recipes/2017/5/31/krabby-patty-inspired-by-spongebob-squarepants

If you are like Pickett, Palacios, Williams and many others, you had childhood dreams of eating cartoon food. If you are still longing for those foods, you are not alone, either.

My hunger for imaginary food started in my childhood and never left me. Now that I finally got to taste them, I can reassure you and my past self that Ruby’s angel surprise cake does taste as good as it looks.