Saturday, September 24, 2011

Happy 7th Birthday!

Recently it was my oldest son's 7th birthday and on the day we celebrated with a Freddo Frog ice cream cake, yum! His birthday party cake was however a bit more of a challenge than a straight-out-of-the-box-frozen-cake variety. This year he had a party at our local Timezone with his friends and his cake request was for a Star Wars Lightsaber! I have always wanted to try and make a cake using fondant icing and I thought I would finally give it a shot!

I was not quite sure how I would manage to make a cake in the shape of a lightsaber, my first ideas were to make either a square or rectangular shaped cake and cut it down to a shape resembling a lightsaber, though I was a bit apprehensive about getting it right! I decided that I really didn't have the time to fluff about trying to back and cut cakes to fit, so I thought I'd firstly give it a go with a premade jam roll cake from the supermarket.

To make the shape of the blue laser sword part of the lightsaber, I joined three mini jam rolls together in a long line using white chocolate ganache and then cut down one end so that it was curved rather than flat. I used the white chocolate ganache to cover the mini jam rolls and let it set in the fridge over night. I coloured some white fondant icing with blue colouring, rolled it out and then covered the sword section with it. There were a few cracks in the fondant when I did this but overall I was happy with it.

For the lightsaber handle I used a large jam roll and cut out a section where it would fit over the end of the blue lightsaber section. To cover the handle, I mixed in a small amount of black fondant with some white fondant to make a light grey shade, however it ended up being a bit of a purple colour instead. Just for my own curiosity to compare the difference in using chocolate ganache and butter cream under fondant, I covered the jam roll for the handle with butter cream icing and let it set in the fridge. I then covered this with the 'grey' fondant icing and joined the handle section to the rest of the lightsaber. I then rolled out some black fondant and cut to shape to stick on top of the handle, scoring it with the back of a fork to make the lines. I also cut out a circle of black fondant icing to put on the end of the handle. I finished off the cake with a large fruit tingle for the button on the handle and some blue glittery ready made gel icing around the laser section of the sword to give it a 'glowing effect.

I only have one cake board at home, and given that it is square, it was looking a bit bare with only the lightsaber sitting in the middle of it, so I piped on the happy birthday message in a 'Star Wars' font! I also made some candle holders out of left over black fondant. Overall result is not perfect, but for my first attempt at a fondant cake I was super impressed with how it turned out, as were the kids! I am pretty proud of my effort!


Inspiration for the lightsaber cake came from a google image search where I found these cakes here, here and here! Funnily enough, one of the lightsaber cakes I found was obviously made for a boy with the same name as our own!
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