As anyone who grew up playing Burger Time, Super Mario Bros., or Legend of Zelda knows: video games are all about food. And not just the pizza, Doritos, and two-liter bottles of soda that typically accompany all-night gaming sessions. We're talking about the pixelated soups, mushrooms, burgers, and cakes found within the games themselves. Often they're powerups, sometimes they're merely décor. But whatever they are, Daniella Zelli is paying attention to them. Zelli is the British mastermind behind the 2-year-old blog Gourmet Gaming , in which the Arts London graduate and professional video-game tester creates real-life versions of the virtual food she finds in games. Today, the site has over 43,000 Tumblr followers waiting to see her weekly game-food posts, all of which feature an original recipe and a seriously mouthwatering photo. (Check out the slideshow above for the choicest examples.)

But let's let the lady speak for herself, shall we? Below, Zelli talks about how Gourmet Gaming forced her to teach herself to cook, the challenge of pulling off an entire recipe from a couple of pixels, and why she will never make anything from Cooking Mama or Burger Time.

How did you get the idea for Gourmet Gaming?

Daneilla Zelli: One day I invited some friends over to play this game, Deadly Premonition . I had already played it, so I knew there were a bunch of these amazing sandwiches in the game so I decided to make them. I was never known as the cook, or the baker, or anything like that. Everyone thought the sandwiches were fun, and they were like, You should make this [food] from this other game . So the next time we played together, I made something again. After that I thought, Why don’t I make a website of all this?

From start to publish, how long does it take you to complete an entire post?

DZ: Between getting all the recipes, developing the original recipe, attempting [to cook it], writing it up, and taking the photos, the process usually takes me an entire week. I'll take a couple of days to read through recipes and pick out the ones I want. Then it’ll be another few days of testing out flavors and ideas. When that's done, I'll come back and do it all again [to shoot for the blog], and hope that it works. At this point, it probably only takes me one or two tries to land on a result I like, because I’ve gotten to know what will work [technique-wise] and which flavors I should turn to for certain foods.

But baking is the exception. Baking is like a science, so if [a recipe] isn’t just right it can take quite a few days to get there. Although sometimes I'll get lucky and it will work right away!

What happened the first time you tried to make a recipe?

DZ: The first idea I got for the website was to do the cake from Portal . By now, I feel like thousands of people have made the cake from Portal since it’s so iconic. I figured if I was going to do a gaming website about food, that [recipe] was the place to start. I had never made a cake before. I was quite scared to do it because I didn't know if people would be interested. What if it ended up being a waste of time, you know? My boyfriend at the time convinced me to just do it. I only did about two attempts on it, and it doesn’t look amazing by any means, but I put it up. Now it’s a reminder of humble beginnings.

Does that mean you never go for something easy like chips whenever you're playing video games?

DZ: No, I’ll eat pretty much anything sweet. But sometimes I will theme my snacks around what I’m playing. When Skyrim came out, I was very insistent that we have things like chicken and cheeses and grapes and rustic bread—we kept it medieval to match with the game. But I do the same with movies like Lord of the Rings . It just makes everything a bit more fun.

You've never had any culinary training, nor worked in a professional kitchen. How did you get so skilled at cooking? DZ: Well, my mom's Italian, so [cooking is] kind of a big thing in my family. But I never really cooked for myself until I left home. The blog forced me to start experimenting, and as a result I became quite passionate about food and baking. Also, I went to art school, so trying to make art from food, or creating recipes from a picture of an item from a video game is quite a cool challenge.

Do you ever draw flavor profiles from your Italian background?

DZ: I don’t draw anything from my life, I just focus on the game and what will work best for it—or whatever really sounds good.

Did you start off modifying existing recipes? Or did you just wing the entire process?

DZ: I definitely tried not to jump in too much in the beginning. I would begin by taking a [basic] recipe for a cake, then looking into the type of cake I wanted to make. And so I'd research and adapt a large number of recipes, picking and choosing certain things I knew I wanted to create to achieve a certain look and taste. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get a recipe just right, but it always happens. There are very few things I can't ever seem to get quite right.

Like what?

DZ: Well, I tried the Boiled Cream Treat from Skyrim —it's this lemon flan-type thing. I must have tried that about seven times. It never ended up working, so it's not on the blog. The Minecraft cake was difficult as well—although that's probably my most popular recipe. It was really difficult to get all the angles and precise measurements just right, so I was really glad when that came together. It also kind of marked the turning point for the website because it got featured in so many places.

Do you have a go-to source for recipes? DZ: No, I'll just kind of Google the recipes I want, or I'll ask friends. It will just be endless searching until I find recipes that have the type of ingredients I want, or until I go, okay, and make [what I have] work for whatever it is I’m doing.

When creating a recipe, do you focus first on looks or taste? DZ: I think it's important for people to visually recognize what food is in my blog photo before they even read about it. So I emphasize having it look exactly like it does in the game. Then I think about what each component of the food could be made of.

Some inspiration images can be really pixelated. How do you transform those pixels into a full-blown recipe?

DZ: It helps to consider where the game is from, what type of world it is, and what ingredients its character might have access to. The image inspiration for the cheesecake from Castlevania was very basic and pixelated, but luckily it was called "the cheesecake." The recipe process was mostly about matching colors to flavors that made sense; for example, the image had red, so I figured since it was dessert it had to be something strawberry or cherry. And then there was a paler bit so I assumed that was vanilla. You just have to use your imagination.

Which recipe are you most proud of?

DZ: The Pizza Sundae from Costume Quest , which is made with ice cream but created to look like a pizza pie, and I love both those things. The end result tasted amazing and looked like nothing I'd ever seen. Even the artist who did all the work for the game contacted me and told me how much he loved that I had made what he'd done into reality.

What kind of games make for the best recipe inspiration? DZ: Role-playing games and MMORPG s like World of Warcraft and League of Legends are good sources because they're trying to create an entire world with a sense of place and culture. Modern first-person shooters and adventure games aren't so great because a lot of them have removed the element of health for the player. Like if you just walk up a hill, you'd be magically healed.

Do certain foods tend to show up time and time again?

DZ: Yeah, definitely. Where the game is made kind of influences the type of foods that show up a lot. Especially if the game is a Japanese RPG—usually there will be some sort of ice cream, steak, or a noodle dish. American games probably have the broadest range of [food]. In certain games, food can be very iconic. For instance, there’s always a soup in Zelda. There will almost always be a pumpkin soup. In Pokémon, there’s always candy. And in Super Mario, they always have mushrooms. And obviously cakes are indiscriminately popular. And that’s good for me because I like sweets!

What's your favorite game, and have you ever made food from it?

DZ: Shadow of Memory . It was a time-travel game; you had to solve your own murder by jumping back and forth in time. It was quite strange. I made the game's Chocolate Samples for the anniversary of the blog. I don’t think anyone else was interested in them, but it was really fun to make them and see them realized.

You probably get a ton of requests. How do you decide which ones to make?

DZ: The requests are always tricky—sometimes people ask for things that are crazy, or just unrealistic. Like the Heart Stopper from Grand Theft Auto IV, which is this burger made with, like, ten pounds of meat and cheese. Some readers have even asked me to make food from a cartoon. To those people I’m like, Sorry, this is strictly video games .

Have you ever hosted a video game food-themed dinner party?

DZ: No, never personally—I have quite a few readers that do and send me pictures—but I probably should! I’d probably start with a Legend of Zelda soup . For the main, I'd maybe have a Streets of Rage chicken . Dessert would probably be the Omnomberry Cake from Guild Wars 2 , because that cake looks amazing.

One last thing, would you ever do anything from Burger Time ?

DZ: There are loads of arcade games like Burger Time that feature food—Facebook games too—but I wouldn't make anything from them because it seems almost too easy. It feels like I’m cheating.