Star Wars cake for a lovely young lady who loves R2D2. Erin's birthday is actually Christmas Day so she tends to miss out a little on her birthday celebrations.
The cake itself is a three layer chocolate and vanilla with marbled chocolate and vanilla buttercream. I cut the front off to create a slope, smoothed the buttercream, covered it in fondant and placed it on a covered board.
I marbled the fondant using black, white and grey to give it a sort of "space" feel. I then airbrushed it with black, blue, purple and silver to even the tones, but add texture.
Meanwhile, I had been making an R2D2 to go on top. I made his body with a core of polystyrene to cut down the weight and used wooden skewers to support his legs.
I painted his panels with blossom tints and lusters mixed with melted cocoa-butter, which gives a much better (and less streaky) finish as it doesn't melt the surface like a alcohol mix.
I also used cocoa butter paint to put stars and writing on the cake. I learned with the shark cake last month that white paint that it water / alcohol soluble picks up the colour of the icing underneath, but a cocoa butter mix stays white! I tried very hard to keep the text with straight lines on each side, but even though I changed my planned wording it proved very hard to keep it exact. This is really bugging me now...
The Star Wars lettering I cut out of fondant, then I airbrushed it a little with grey and silver.
So, Star Wars cake done, lessons learned, child happy...
...and safe to say I will never again be making a cake around Christmas...that's just crazy!
