Inspired by www.pimpmysnack.com on which students (I am assuming, as they have the most time and creative energy to spare) attempt to create ubersized versions of their favourite snack, my friend Justin and I got down to business on Thursday night to create our very own contribution, (which we are submitting to the site today) so here we have it: the method for our "Big up Bassetts" (ie gigantic liquorice allsorts).

1.Lay out ingredients. Marvel beauty of untouched individual elements.

2.Open pre-purchased allsorts and examine and scrutinize with great precision. Consume a few for research purposes.

3.Use red and yellow food colourings to create pink and yellow icings respectively by mashing appropriate amounts into fondant icing. Use pre-purchased allsort for colour chart type comparison.

4.Attempt to create brown icing by adding red yellow and blue food colourings. Create weird grayish pink colour, re-examine colour mixing knowledge you were taught in art GCSE, persevere, and eventually reach a vaguely pale brown colour (which will later be used as “padding” due to not making enough yellow)

5.Time to melt the liquorice sticks. With carefree abandonment chuck sticks into glass bowl above boiling pan of water, in naïve belief that they will melt in similar style to chocolate. 20 minutes later begin to panic as sticks start to mold themselves to bowl.

6.Hurriedly scrape sticks out of bowl into greaseproof paper and replace in bowl. Cover, realize water is boiling over, and uncover.

7.After a further 15 minutes, examine paper parcel hopefully and discover still very solid sticks. In a fit of rage, hurtle entire paper parcel directly into boiling water.

8.Finally achieve some sort of sticky goo consistency, tip onto greaseproof paper sheet and begin to gracefully roll into shape. Discover liquorice is in fact substance of satan and hammer unrelentlessly with rolling pin. Allow to cool and cut into neat(ish) square shape. Use discarded edges to form round centre.

9.Return to coloured icing blobs. Split pink into two balls and roll into squares to sandwich liquorice square. Roll out yellow into long sausage shape, realize it will appear too thin round its liquorice centre and in a moment of genius use pale brown failure icing to pad the centre of the yellow tube (as discussed in step 4).

10.Repeat step 7 with further liquorice strips, but with newly discovered wisdom (having learned how resilient liquorice goo becomes) wrap in two separate packages in required oblong shapes before boiling. Assemble with matching fondant sticks to create checkered allsort.

11.Place “big up bassets” on a decorative surface along with original allsorts, and admire handiwork. Consider becoming professional chef or similar. Far too much effort and energy required for this project, but amusement value and final result definitely worth it.