The Necronomnomnom: Moon-Beast Pies

This recipe looked particularly fun to make since it is somewhat shaped like the creature it’s named after!

In H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, the moon-beasts are toad-like creatures without any eyes and a mass of pink tentacles at the end of their snout.

There are three steps to this recipe – the cake itself, the marshmallow icing filling, and the strawberry filling.

The cake is made first. Wet ingredients are combined together in one bowl, dry in another, and then the two are combined. This batter is dropped by “large rounded spoonfuls” onto baking sheet, with space in between since they do spread out, and baked until done.

I wish they described the size of the spoonfuls in more detail, though. This recipe is supposed to make 12 moon pies but I only had enough for 5 1/2! I guess my moon-beast pies were much bigger than they were supposed to be.

Once the cake is cooled, it’s time for the filling!

The marshmallow icing filling is easy – just mix all ingredients together until smooth.

For the strawberry filling, the spaghetti is cooked like usual, but in water that has Jell-O mix powder mixed in. You will also need strawberry jam, though if you’re only going off the easier-to-understand version of the recipe in the back (vs. the Lovecraftian-language version in the main body of the cookbook) you might miss this – the strawberry jam is actually listed on the same page as the instructions, and not with the ingredients.

For assembly, the icing is spread onto the flat side of half the cakes. The cooled spaghetti is then placed on top of the icing so that it hangs over the sides of the cakes.

Quick note: It’s helpful to look at the main recipe vs. the version in the back to see photos of what this is supposed to look like (though I felt it might look even better if the spaghetti came out one side instead of all around). It also felt like there was an excessive amount of spaghetti – I could have cut the amount of spaghetti by 1/4 and still had too much left, which unfortunately ended up being tossed.

And the last step is a dollop of jam is placed off center so it oozes out one side when a second cake is placed on top.

Taste: 6/10

The cake and the icing were absolutely delicious and got an 8/10 from me, but I thought the jam and spaghetti ruined it. I tried the first one with the jam and spaghetti included, but ended up scraping off the jam and removing the spaghetti on subsequent cakes.

The spaghetti also gets really hard and crunchy if you leave it for too long, and it’s really not good to eat cold spaghetti (fried rice syndrome anyone?).

Difficulty: Average

This wasn’t as hard to put together as I was expecting. It seemed like such a big list of steps that I put this off for a while, but it really wasn’t too bad.

The “hardest” part is making the cake, which is mixing ingredients together and plopping it onto a baking sheet. The spaghetti is made like regular spaghetti, and the icing is just mixing ingredients together until smooth.

Cost: Pricey

You’ll need butter, sugar, eggs, evaporated milk, vanilla extract, flour, salt, baking soda, cocoa powder, baking powder, confectioner’s sugar, marshmallow creme or fluff, spaghetti, strawberry Jell-O, and strawberry jam.