I admit Darth Vader is probably not who you would think of having as a guest at the holiday table or even as the guest of honor in place of the turkey...and alas the only correlation between this cake and the holidays is that I carved it (not to eat it but to decorate it).
Time to rewind and hit play. Darth Vader was a request by a young man, Noah, who happened to be into spiderman last year. This year he thinks Star Wars is out of this world (and I personally happen to agree). So he requested his favorite character, Darth Vader. Before we could leave the space station we had to hit the hyper drive, and challenges surrounded this project. Although there is a Darth Vader cake pan out there, it would have to be an eBay purchase and I had two days from order to delivery, so eBay was out. Internet searches are an amazing thing. I had a variety of homemade Darth Vader cakes to study and picked one or two that looked reasonably likely of being accomplished, then I devised my plan.
I baked a butter fudge chocolate sheet cake and froze it. Icing was not a problem, I knew I would only need one color, black. I started drawing and carving, taking pieces cut from here and there to make the mouth plate of the helmet and tried to add details. Have you ever used cake as a medium for sculpting? It is easier to do when frozen, however cake thaws fairly quickly and can get messy. After building the chocolate cake it was time to ice it. Now I have to admit it is hard to take a picture of a black cake. Details don't always come out and it may have some proportional issues, but I think Noah got the idea, and hopefully knew who it was supposed to be. Mom and Dad seemed pleased that Noah would have the force with him on his birthday.
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