I have pulled three all-nighters in my entire life. The first one was before the last day of the semester my senior year of college. We had to make sumo wrestling robots and ours was having programming issues. We spent all night debugging our program just to decide at the last minute our logic was too complicated and go back to what we started the evening with 10 hours earlier. Our robot’s name was The Iron Chef and we ended up doing pretty well in the competition.
The second all-nighter I ever pulled was an epically disastrous night in which I tried to bake, decorate, and bag 1000 sugar cookies in a 34-hour period. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE. And leads to bad things.
My third all-nighter had a much better and actually productive result. After two spectacular failures, I opened a can of coke, picked up my pencil…and planned ahead! Lots of times I sort of go off the cuff when making my cakes. I have a vague idea in my head and the execution is based on some skill, a lot of luck, and a few prayers to the icing gods.
I had tried that earlier in the week and apparently my madd cake skillz were a little out of whack or I was missing a lot of luck because the results were less than pretty. For the second go around (and reason for the all-nighter. That and some optimistically planned events of the previous day.) I did some prep work, thought about it a little bit, and was a little more vigorous with my prayers to the icing gods.
And the result…well you can judge for yourself.
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Pingback: Star Wars Lego Cake - simmiecakes
Hi, I’m a couple years late to this party (and in Australia, it seems you are in the US).
I have seen this cake and may tackle making it for my sons 9th bday in 6 days time. Was wondering what you mean by a “rice crispy” head. Is it like chocolate crackles except with rice bubbles? The other help from previous posts has been very helpful.
I made the head using rice crispy treats. Hm…according to wikipedia, you call them rice bubbles in Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Krispies
Rice crispy treats are made with rice bubbles, marshmallow, and butter. You melt 8 Tbsp butter and 10 oz bag of marshmallows (about 40 of them) in a large pot. When they are melted, add 4 cups of the cereal and combine to evenly coat. Then I butter my hands and shape the head using the treats. Once it’s shaped to your liking, leave it on some wax paper for a little while until it cools. It’ll harden up a bit and then you can cover it with icing. Hope that helps!
Hi Simmie,
I just want to say that I’ve been scouring the web for stormtrooper cakes and yours is BY FAR the best looking one I’ve found! I am making one (hopefully as nice as yours) and ironically (like Vikki) have made and frozen the actual cake! I also made the hand ‘cuffs’ out of fondant and have left them to dry (cake is for Sunday)
I have never worked with rice crispy treats for cake decor before and I’m not sure i really want to! What I’m planning to do is what most people make ‘cake pops’ out of: they bake a cake, after its cooled, they crumble it apart and mix it with icing, then make them into balls and put them on a stick and ice them. I figure I can make the head shape and arms this way then freeze them so they are solid, and then cover them in fondant and attach them to the body with brochette sticks!!!
Also, I found a photo of a life size stormtrooper cake and noticed that it was made in layers with a board under each layer so once it was cut into, you had a guide as to where to stop cutting the slice. I though this was really smart because it gives a bit more height and make it all a bit more sturdy (i hope!) Although now that I think about it, I’m not sure how i could press a dowel rod through a board without shifting the whole cake?!! Any suggestions?
thanks
ps: here’s the lifesize cake: http://www.forevergeek.com/wp-content/media/2012/01/stormtroopercake3-470×748.jpg
I’ve seen that life sized cake! That’s amazing! And crazy…
I used rice crispy treats because they are much lighter than using cake. When you balance stuff high on a cake, you don’t want it to heavy, lest it fall over (I could go all engineer on you, but I’ll resist). The cake ball idea may work (and let me know if it does!) but I would be afraid of the cake starting to crumble apart once it defrosts. Also, covering frozen cake in fondant can lead to a weird moisture gumminess as it defrosts. Rice crispy treats are nice because it’s really easy to mold them to the shape you want and once it cools it stays that way.
The arms I made were just out of solid fondant blobs that I shaped correctly and stuck to the side with a lot of water and toothpicks.
I also had that question with dowels going through cardboard and figured out as long as you put a point on the end of your dowel (and the dowel is sturdy enough) when you push it through, it will break right through the cardboard no problem without moving anything. That would definitely make it sturdier, depending on how big your cake is. Mine wasn’t terribly tall so I didn’t feel the need to add the extra cardboard layers.
Good luck! Let me know how it turns out!
Hi Simmie!
So I ended up using rice krispy treats for the head and arms, but now my problem is the legs! they are not even strong enough to old themselves up let alone the body, head and arms!!! the cake is not firm enough!! I’m considering using rice krispy treats for the legs also but then the only cake in this trooper is the body and feet! not enough to feed the 20-25 people expected, unless I make a few lego block cakes on the side like you did.
Do you have any suggestions on what to do for the legs?? I still have some leftover cake in the freezer that i can use but i’m afraid it will be too soft to hold up the body once defrosted and iced! HELP!!!
Hmmm…my guess is you didn’t use a dense enough cake. Next time, look for a recipe with A LOT of butter and sugar.
But for now, my best bet would be to stick a dowel in each of the legs. Then use a piece of cardboard to sit on top of the leg section and put the body on top of that. That way, the dowels are supporting the body, not the cake. That’s my best guess. Good luck!
thanks for your input!
I ended up remaking the legs with rice krispies and wrapping them in my cake pop mix then in fondant! once i got to the party though, it was so warm in the house (caused by the number of bodies and hyper children) that the cake started to SWEAT!!! literally! then he fell over… TWICE! end result was me holding him up so birthday boy could blow out candles and photos could be taken!
would love to show you a pic to get your input so that i can improve on my decorating skills!!
Ooo…send me a pic! I would totally love to see it! I made a nutcracker cake once that stood through most of a Christmas dinner then pitched himself off the table when the debate got too heated, (Or he was just unstable and only lasted so long) so I feel your pain.
Hi, me again! I have baked the cake and am starting putting it all together tomorrow! Wish me luck! Can you tell me, did you secure the cake to the board at all and if so what did u use? Did u put dowling rods thru the body in to the head as well? Lastly, when u iced it did you do it in section to give the ‘lego’ look or do all in one section and then cut the other bits? Thanks
I believe I used one larger dowel and stuck it through the whole body and into the cake board. I left a bit sticking out the top so I could also use it to secure the head. I think I used two smaller dowels in the head two to help keep it attached. I remember that he sort of leaned to the back a little so I made an extra few lego blocks and stacked them in the back for him to lean against. Seemed to work pretty well.
For the fondant, I cut out the fondant using my template for the body shape. That means I had one piece for the front, one for the back, and one for each side. The feet were cut out separately and the arms were made of a big hunk of fondant. That’s why you can see the seams, but it was the easiest way to get square edges. Then all the accent pieces were cut out individually and stuck on. I also covered the blocks that way. And then the nubs are six separate slices glued on. Good luck!
Hi I am about to try and re-create your amazing star wars cake. 1 question – did u defrost the frozen cake at all before icing it? I am concerned about te cake being damp if iced frozen. Thanks
Yeah, I froze the cake to carve it and then let it defrost before I iced it. If you ice a frozen cake the fondant gets all weird and tacky.
Good luck!
HI! I absolutely love your creation of the stormtrooper. My son’s b-day is this month and I would love to attempt this cake. Would you mind telling me just how you put it together? Which cake pans did you use for body? Did you make the head in a round bowl? Any information would be greatly appreciated! Wish me luck.
Hey! The cake is probably 4-5 layers tall. I think I just baked a two 9×13 rectangular cakes and cut them up. I made a scaled up template of the lego minifig body and after stacking the layers and freezing them, I used the template to cut out the right shape. I used the same template to cut out the fondant pieces as well. The head is rice crispy treats that I covered with fondant and decorated.
Hello, I had a request to make a 3D stormtrooper cake and so I found your pic and kinda want to use it as my guide. About how wide is the cake…other storm trooper cakes I’ve seen are very sknny and look unstable. This is my first stand up 3D cake. Thank you for your help. Oh and also about how many did your cake serve?
I used pretty close proportions to an actual lego minifig. I believe he came out to be about 12″ tall, but I can’t remember exactly how wide. Maybe two inches wide. Freezing the cake beforehand makes a HUGE difference when shaping the cake. I made templates to cut the shape. The head is rice crispy treats and the arms are just hunks of fondant formed and stuck on with toothpicks. The cake was for a birthday party for a 10 year old, so I believe it served about 25-30 kids (which is why I made the extra lego blocks).
What a nice trip down memory lane with your delightful blog. Would like to reconnect as we are all living in Las Vegas. Saw your mom, the Jackster, when I went home in September.