Recipe: The Cake is a Lie! — The Portal Cake

In honor of last year’s Portal 2 release, I thought it’d be fun to wait until the midnight release (I had pre-ordered the game 3 months before! :D) while baking a yummy real life replica of the cake from the original game. Above is a photoshopped copy of the cake I made as well as a photo from the original game — FANTASTIC! 🙂

If you’re familiar with the recipe Easter egg located midway through the first Portal, then you may be a little wary of eating this delicious little sugar bomb — The original recipe calls for certain undesirable such as “fish shaped solid waste” and “pull and peel licorice”. Worry not though, fellow sweet toothed gamers, for I did my best to replicate the recipe without any of it’s yucky extras.

I did make the cake from scratch, but I’ve included an ingredients list that includes a lot of pre-made items so you can bake it successfully even if you’re better at solving logic problems and working out physics than baking in your momma’s kitchen!

1 bag of sweetened coconut flakes
1 bag of chopped pecans
2 jars of Coconut Pecan frosting
1 jar of Vanilla frosting
1 box of German Chocolate Cake
Oil, water and eggs as per the directions on the box
1 small box of Jell-O Chocolate Pudding
Chocolate syrup
Maraschino Cherries
Birthday candles

Optional Ingredients: (Not suggested)

Fish shaped crackers
Fish shaped candies
Fish shaped dirt
Fish shaped solid waste
Fish shaped ethyl benzene
Pull and peel licorice
Fish shaped volatile organic compounds
Sediment shaped sediment
A 20-foot thick impermeable clay layer

Bake the cake by following the directions on the box. You’ll want two round cakes, and this should take about 35 minutes. Add the packet of instant chocolate pudding into the mix before baking — It’ll make it even more delicious and moist! 🙂

While the cake is baking, combine the two jars of Coconut Pecan frosting in a large bowl. Mix in a cup of the shredded coconut and 1/2 cup of chopped pecans. Stir it up and add chocolate syrup until the color is a dark brown, rather than the original light brown of the frosting. Be careful when adding the syrup — You don’t want your frosting to get watery. You could also mix in cocoa baking powder, like I did, but the syrup is usually on hand for most nerd’s that I know and also works pretty well (I’ve made this cake twice — Once for the release and once for a friend so he could give it to another friend for his birthday!)

Once the cake is finished, allow it to cool and then take it out of the pan. Flip it upside down (or cut the top to level it off) and use the vanilla frosting to hold the two separate cakes together so that you have a two layer round cake! Save a bit of the white frosting for the top of the cake though.

Apply the frosting mixture you made earlier to the entire exterior of the cake. This may be a little difficult if the pecan chunks are too big — Just do the best you can!

Put a few dollops of remaining vanilla frosting on top of the cake around the edges — The original cake has 8 but I used too big of a dollop and ended up with only five, lol.

Place a cherry on top of each frosting mound and stick a candle in the middle!

Ta-da! You’ve now created a near-exact replica of the famous cake from the infamous Portal video game. Enjoy! You, [subject name here], must be the pride of [subject hometown here]!