The Joys of Caking: May the Force be With You

One of the great joys in life is introducing young children to good science fiction. It's that moment when this little person sees something for the first time that you know they will love and that you have loved for many years.

My nephew has fallen in love with Star Wars. I watched the first movie with him and my niece (they had already seen it a few times at this point) and they kept telling me all of the awesome things that were going to happen. "Wait, you've seen this before, Aunt Joy? Do you know what happens next?"

By now he's probably seen those movies more times than the rest of my family put together. So naturally, for his birthday, he requested a Darth Vader cake.

I don't know why, but for some reason, both he and my niece love Darth Vader. Maybe it's the voice. I don't know. But I was not loving the idea of making a Darth Vader cake. I mean, it would be cool. But do you know how much black fondant I would need????? Way too much.

Fortunately, when I presented the idea of Star Wars cupcakes with ALL of the characters instead of just one, he was on board.

I made chocolate cupcakes and sprinkled some gold sprinkles on top to look like, well, stars. I know, clever.

That was the easy part. Now I had to make all of the characters. Suddenly that Darth Vader cake wasn't looking so bad . . .

While doing some research, I discovered these star wars cookie cutters. There are a few different versions (including one with ships) but I got the one that included Yoda, Darth Vader, a Storm Trooper and Boba Fett.

Now I was a little nervous about these. Some of the reviews of the product said the cutters were hard to use and they couldn't get the dough out of the cutter. However, I found that they were extremely easy to use, at least with fondant.

First I cut out some storm troopers in white fondant.

I made a lot of these because as any Star Wars fan knows, the storm troopers always far outnumber the good guys. Good thing none of them can hit the broadside of a barn.

They look pretty cool just like that, but I wanted to add the black as well.

Next I made Darth Vader. I know that there is only one Darth Vader, but since I knew both Peter and Elisa would want that one, I made two.

Wilton has this new product - it's like edible modeling clay. I used this instead of black fondant because it was a little bit cheaper. It's fairly similar to fondant, but it seemed to be less sticky.

I love Yoda. Too many Yodas, you never can have.

I had to make the rest of the characters without cookie cutters. The first one (and my favorite) was C3PO.

I used yellow fondant and just cut out the shape with a knife. I used the small round cutter to cut out the eyes. Then I dusted it with gold petal dust to give him some shine.

I thought he turned out great!

I used the medium circle cutter to make the faces for Han, Luke and Leia. I also used it for Luke's hair. Han and Leia's hair - frosting.

I just eyeballed R2D2.

Chewbacca was a little darker than I intended. I just used the grass tip for him. There was another cookie cutter set that included him, but everyone recognized who it was supposed to be.