Scene from Tatooine - Cookies

This was actually a quick and easy treat for our Star Wars fan club.

1.  Make a double batch of your favorite rolled sugar cookie or snickerdoodle cookie dough.  Roll dough and cut a mix of round and square cookies.  Also cut/shape some odd pieces, see picture.   As pictured, I used about 4 dozen cookies.  Cut small holes from the middle of 2/3rds cookies before you bake them, so that you can stack them on skewers.  Move cookies to baking sheet and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar.  Bake and cool cookies per your recipe.

2.  Take a serving platter and hot glue 3 or 4 bamboo skewers to the base.  I used a clean flower pot saucer for my base.  Also, I did approximately 1 dozen cookies as large rectangles, with 2 hole, and I threaded those on 2 skewers so that I have a very tall stable "canyon wall" to hide the Jawas.  So the pictured dish has 4 stacks of skewered cookies, one round, one square and the bigger cookies on 2 skewers.

3.  Thread the cookies on the skewers, so you have 8-12 cookies per skewer.  (Cut skewer if it is too tall.)  Top the tower with a cookie that doesn't have a hole. Place other cookies around in smaller stacks, and fill in with the small odd-shaped cookies.

4.  Borrow your kids' Hasbro R2-D2 and Jawa figures to complete the scene!

R2-D2 - Difficult

Have a good picture handy to help with decorating.

1. Bake 8 round layers (8” is best, 9” okay). 

2.  Level each layer.  See: http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/leveling-cakes.cfm  Do not skip this step!  Otherwise your cake will not be straight or stable! 

3. Using cake circles, create 4 2-layer cakes with buttercream icing between each layer.  Crumb coat with icing.

4.  Stack 3 of the cakes (to make a 6 layer cake) using dowels to separate each cake.  See: http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/tiered-cakes.html  Do not skip the dowels!  Your cake cannot stand without dowels!

 5.  To make cake pictured, cover with while rolled fondant. See: http://www.wilton.com/decorating/fondant/rolled-fondant.cfm  This is pretty tricky to do on such a tall cake, so it may take some practice.  Be sure the icing is dry before you lay the fondant on it.  Use a high quality fondant, such as Satin Ice - see my Rolled Fondant post for details.  Alternative 1: cover the 2 layer cakes with fondant, and just cover the "seam" with decorations.  Alternative 2:  frost smooth with white icing.

6.  Put the last cake on a thick silver cake drum.  Using a serrated knife, cut the dome shape.  Alternative, you can bake the last layer in a Pyrex bowl.  Frost with gray buttercream, and/or cover with gray rolled fondant.

7.  Tint fondant blue and gray.  Cut shapes from fondant for details (use sharp paring knife, cookie cutters).  Attach to cake by brushing very lightly with water.  (small brush or damp finger)

8. The red “eye” is the ball from my “track ball” style mouse. It really looked good – see if you have something handy to use for this!  Or else use a fondant sphere, rub with vegetable oil to make the ball shiny.

9. Decorate base with balls of fondant.

10. Create arms out of Styrofoam or Rice Crispy treats, cover with fondant, decorate and position.

Note – this cake is pictured on a stand using for decorating from Joann’s or Michael’s – it made a perfect base for R2!