Frosted cupcakes stylized after the spelunker in the indie adventure game Spelunky.

What is Spelunky? The official site sums things up quite nicely —

Spelunky is a platformer with lots of monsters, items, traps, and secrets. Dying in Spelunky can be quick and painful. But each time you restart, you’ll play a new, randomly-generated set of levels! It will feel fresh and exciting, and you’ll have to think on your feet. —Spelunky World

And the styling is gosh darn cute. You can even play the original game of Spelunky for free!

Now that we all know what Spelunky is, here’s how to create the spelunker from this platformer in cupcake format.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes
White frosting
Copper (Fleshtone) food coloring
Big red jelly beans
Caramels
Cheerios
Chocolate sprinkles
Sugar candy eyeballs
Tiny brown M&Ms

Equipment:

Knife
Toothpicks

I already had baked some cupcakes, so I had those ready to rock. You’ll want the cupcakes cooled before you get to decorating.

To dye the frosting, add a drop of Copper (Fleshtone) food coloring to the frosting and mix.

Assemble the ingredients! (Ignore the mini Oreos in the below picture, those didn’t work out. I originally was planning on those for the hats, but the cream center was too big. Instead I used the candy googly eyes and ate the Oreos. The food markers didn’t work out either, so you can ignore those in the picture too. But everything else is super important.)

To create the hat, unwrap a caramel and smoosh out a bit. Cut or pull off any hard points on the edges. Trim the corners from one side of the caramel to create a triangle (see below image.)

Smoosh out the other side of the caramel to create the brim.

Turn up the brim.

Take a candy googly eye, and with the flat white side up, push into the caramel, right above the brim.

Once the hats are completed, warm up the frosting. Heat up for 3-5 seconds at a time, stirring every few seconds until the consistency is like that of whipped cream. This will make the frosting look smoother.

When you’ve the frosting ready to go, take a cupcake and frost.

Gently push on a hat.

Add a Cheerio on each side of the head to create the ears.

Take a tiny brown M&Ms and cut in half. Add cut side down to create the eyes.

Add a big ole jelly bean to the middle of the cupcake for the nose.

Drop a chocolate sprinkle between the hat brim and the eyeball. Use a toothpick to push into place.

Look for a curved chocolate sprinkle for the mouth and add to the cupcake.

Repeat for all cupcakes.