The Darth Vader Cake - A Labor of Love

For Ben's birthday cake last year, I made a Spiderman cake. (you can see that here) It was so simple, even though it looks like it was hard. Ben loved it but almost immediately following his 3-year-old birthday party he was already planning his next party and his cake has always been his number one plan...a Darth Vader cake.

I have been dreading this cake because I knew what I wanted to do and I knew it would be hard but I just had to give it a try. Troy was actually a big help with this cake. He had the brilliant idea to use rice crispy treats to mold the face with a mask we have. The face and front of the head are all rice crispy treats but the back of the head is cake.

I frosted the helmet with a thick layer of chocolate frosting and then put it in the freezer over night.

The morning of Ben's party, I made some marshmallow fondant (you can see the recipe by checking out Ben's cake last year using the link in the first paragraph of this post). I added black food coloring to the fondant during the kneading process. I had to make a double batch of the fondant so that it would be big enough to place over the head. Once I had it all rolled out into a circle, both Troy and I together lifted the fondant over the chocolate frosted cake and then smoothed the fondant over the mold.

Troy added the details by using more fondant and some black decorating gel. I wouldn't enter it in any contests as I can see the need for so many improvements but I think we did a pretty good job for our little party!

Here is a cross section of the cake and rice crispy treats once the cake had been cut.

I couldn't have made this cake without Troy's help this year. THANK YOU TROY! We were both working together because we love our boy Ben. He's worth every bit of effort that was needed to create this cake.  I wonder what will be in store for next year...