Stormtrooper Cake
I made this cake for my boss her boyfriend. She didn’t know I made cakes for other people so when I said that, she said “Oh no… I should have known that earlier my boyfriend turns 30 in a couple of days and the party is next week…” So I was like “I have vacation so that is fine I have time, what kind of cake do you want?” XD And apparently he really liked my R2D2 Cake I made last year for my boyfriends birthday but making the same cake twice is so boring so I asked her if he would like something else from Star Wars, and so the Stormtrooper helmet it was 😀 It, of course, had to be the imperial stormtrooper helmet, which made it a bit more difficult, but it had to be, that is the original one!
So I started by calculating everything out so it would fit on the board and printed a picture of the helmet and the text “Jan 30”, because well… Jan (her boyfriend) turned 30 XD When that was all printed and cut out, I made sure it would fit all nicely on the board I had, and it did, so I started to bake some cake!
I baked 2 10 inch round lemon cakes and levelled them, and I cut them both to the shape of the helmet (from the template I printed out). I also cut a non-stick cake card to the shape of the helmet using the template so I could stack, cut and cover the cake before placing it on my board. Then I made some Swiss meringue buttercream and added a bit on the cake card and placed on the first layer of cake on so it would stay. Then I added layer of the buttercream on top of the cake, spread some strawberry jam on and lay the last layer of cake on top. Then I started to carve the cake. I found it quite difficult but if you keep pictures from the helmet from different angles near you, you should be able to do it. After I was happy with how the cake looked I crumb coated it in buttercream and placed it in the fridge. When the crumb coat was set I gave it a last coat, put it back in the fridge and started rolling out some white fondant and covered the cake with it. Then I put it back in the fridge.
Then it was decoration time!! 😀 I started by covering the cake board. I rolled out some black fondant and covered the board with it. Then I mixed some white food colour with a bit of food-grade alcohol (I used vodka, no worries all the alcohol will evaporate). I tried the paint first on a piece of scrap fondant, I splattered some paint on by flicking the brush on my finger. When I was happy how that looked I started flicking the paint on the covered board, to represent a stary sky. When I liked how that looked I coloured some fondant “Star Wars yellow” and rolled it quite thin. I placed the letters I printed out on top of the fondant and instead of struggling with cutting around the paper I rolled over the letters once so it would leave a very tiny indent in the fondant and from there I cut out the letters and placed them on the cake board making sure they were in the right position. So I laid my template of the helmet on the board and placed the letters so it would look good when the cake was on top.
When the cake was fully set and could handle a move I transferred it to the board using a spatula. When it was on the board I made sure the sides looked oké and then I started on the details. First I coloured some fondant blue making sure I kept checking with the pictures for the right shade of blue XD. I extruded the fondant through a fondant/clay extruder that had a small rectangular opening. Then I cut the long flat strip in smaller pieces and made sure they were all the same length. I placed them on the cake with some water to make them stick. Then I rolled out black fondant for the nose bit and placed on some grey rectangles. For the eyes, I rolled a thick piece of white fondant and made sure the middle of it was thinner so it would line up with the nose. I cut out the eyes using my template and stuck some thin rolled black fondant behind it. The rest is pretty self-explanatory XD just look and a picture and make it out of fondant haha. And that is the cake actually finished 😀
When I showed it to my boss she really really liked it! Which was soo nice. She told me that her boyfriend was also really impressed and had to take a picture immediately to show his friends, and not long after she told me he posted it on Instagram, which he apparently never does. So thank you for that compliment!! All and all it was a tricky cake to make especially because of the shape with carving but I am really happy how it turned out and I had a lot of fun making it! I hope you had a wonderful birthday Jan!!