Zachary's 3rd Birthday Party Cake

So I got given the task of making my nephew's birthday cake for his 3rd birthday party. I knew that a Star Wars or Spiderman theme was on the cards for this cake and luckily I had previously seen some Star Wars themed baking items in Lakeland (praise the baking gods for this shop!!) so Star Wars was the theme chosen for his cake!! In Lakeland I found some silicone bakeware in the shape of 4 Star Wars characters however when doing a practice run of the cakes they seemed to get very stuck in the case so I was left with half of a Darth Vader face and half of a Stormtroopers face... not very appealing! I was infact going to do it again for Zach's birthday party but I just ran out of time so I didn't end up using the silicone bakeware. For these cakes I just used a plain sponge found on the internet.

the failed Star Wars cakes with half faces!!

the silicone bakeware of Star Wars characters
£12.99 from Lakeland

Ok, so the actual birthday cake was a Darth Vader cake. I found the tin on Amazon and ordered it straight away! I thought of doing a chocolate cake because I had never used icing before and if the icing didn't work then I knew the cake was already dark like Darth Vader is. 

The Darth Vader tin
£7.20 from Amazon

Luckily, I was able to use the black icing that my mum got me!! I used apricot glaze to stick the icing to the cake and it worked so well!! I was so pleased with the way the icing turned out and it was simpler than I thought it would be trying to put the icing onto the cake. All I had to do was roll it out using a LOT of icing sugar because it did get stuck to the board a couple of times (oops) and then just fold the icing over the rolling pin and gently place it over the cake! (simple!!). I did however try to use white icing and dye it black but it did not work at all! It resulted in me and my phone getting covered in black dye and the icing gradually melting and getting stuck to my hands... not a good look!! So I advise pre-coloured icing at all costs!! 

I did a trial run on the Friday of the cake and that one worked excellently. I filled the chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream and it looked great so I was praying when I made it on the Saturday ready for the party on Sunday it would work just as well (which it did- HALLELUJAH!) 

The test cake all sliced in the middle and filled with buttercream!

Also the test cake with the icing placed on. I could see where
the icing on this cake had gone a bit wrong
 so I could do it better on the actual cake for the party!!

The actual cake I did I rolled the icing out a bit thinner and smoothed it out a lot more so you can see so many bumps on the icing. I moulded the icing to the cake all by hand as using a smoothing tool was a bit complicated as it's such an awkward cake to shape but I think it worked out well when I did smooth it out by hand. Also on the test cake I realised that I needed to leave a bit more icing for the sides and not stretch the icing over the sides of the helmet of Darth Vader because I found that the icing was cracking a bit. So on the actual cake I left a lot more icing to mould to the cake so it didn't crack any more. 

Just showing you how I moulded the icing onto the cake.

The actual cake for the party.
See it's more smoothed out and not so lumpy!!
(ignore the phone shaped shadow on the cake!!) 

So that's the end of this blog!! I hope you enjoyed how I made Zach's birthday cake! It was a struggle but I would definitely enjoy making more cakes for peoples birthdays or whatever (anyones birthday coming up? Let me know!) I really want to widen my cake making and really try to improve on making bigger cakes as I think I've nearly mastered cupcakes so I really want to move onto bigger cakes!! Let me know about anybody's birthdays coming up if you want a cake made perhaps???

Anyway thanks for reading!!!

Caitlin xxx