Did you know that snack stadiums were a thing? I had never seen or heard of them until I saw a crazy one on Bon Appetit’s website a year or two ago. And I was out of town for the Super Bowl last year, so this year, after seeing this awesome snacknadium in the L.A. Times, I knew we had to build our own.

We decided to build our stadium on the coffee table in front of the giant TV, so people could just reach over and grab a chip or a cupcake while watching the game. And since our coffee table isn’t enormous, we couldn’t go quite as epic as the L.A. Times. But I wanted it to still be clear that it wasn’t just a weird grouping of junk foods.

It all starts with the field, of course, and it seemed like a no-brainer to use guacamole. I just bought a few containers at the grocery store, since I figured chunky homemade guacamole wouldn’t look quite right. We spread it all in a disposable aluminum baking dish (also from the grocery store), and I used a plastic bag and pastry tip to pipe yard lines and the names of the teams in the end zones with sour cream. Toby cut up some kind of fancy Slim Jims and used toothpicks to fashion them into field goal posts.

We used two cabinet organizers along the length of the “field” to create the illusion of stadium seating, and covered them with chips. Then, we added two small containers at the top of each organizer to replicate sky boxes, and lined up pigs in a blanket inside more containers along each end zone. I also baked some football helmet cookies, which I decorated with the team colors, and some chocolate souffle cupcakes (recipe coming soon!) that were frosted to look like footballs. We used those and some salsa to line the edges of the stadium.

Since this year’s Super Bowl was in Phoenix, which I consider to be my hometown, I wanted the stadium to have some Arizona flair. So, I drew a saguaro cactus on some green construction paper, used it to trace several more, cut them out and then used a heavy duty glue stick to glue them on toothpicks. Then we put the cactus toothpicks (and some football toothpicks we had in the cupboard) in some of the cupcakes and in the “sky boxes.” Just in case you needed more evidence that I’m nuts.

I was really happy with how our “snacknadium” turned out, and even happier that it was so easy to assemble. The only items that required any cooking at all were the pigs in a blanket (which one of our guests brought), and the baked goods, which clearly are not a requirement. The actual assembly probably took about 15-20 minutes, including putting together the goal posts and piping the lines on the guacamole.

One thing that made the process go quickly, though, was having the containers ready and a plan — and backup plan — for what was going where. I actually had planned to put these Cheeto-crusted jalapeno poppers in one of the end zones (I still made them, and they were delicious, but I didn’t have them ready in time for the stadium), but we made a game-time decision (hehe, sorry) to use the pigs-in-blankets in both end zones instead.

I would definitely encourage you to build your own snack stadium for your next tailgate or football party, and be as creative as you’d like with the structure and snacks you include! It’s easier than you think. Just be sure to have a plan.