Jawa Cupcakes - Easy

Blogger JustJenn has some amazing Star Wars baking and party ideas!  (http://justjennrecipes.com/category/star-wars/)  All her stuff is very cool, but best of are all the Jawa cupcakes!  (I don't know how many people sent me the link to these! We do love Jawas!)   I decided to recreate the cupcakes for Dragon*Con 2012, and wanted to share my photos and recipes.

First, cute as her cookies were, Jenn's vegan chocolate cookie recipe didn't work for me.  The dough was way too crumbly; I could not get it to roll properly and it didn't taste right.  If you need a vegan recipe, do some searching online.  But  if you can use a recipe with real butter, that's definitely the way to go.  My rolled sugar recipe is posted in the Cookie and Frosting Recipe page linked to the side bar. I used this, but you can use your favorite rolled cookie recipe, any flavor.

I started by making my standard rolled snickerdoodle cookies, adding a fair bit of brown food coloring to the batter.  I put the dough in the fridge to chill overnight.  (Note - Jenn's cookies are much darker brown, which I like. Using a dark chocolate cookie dough is ideal for color. My kids love snickerdoodles best of all, however, so I didn't do a chocolate cookie.  The price: my Jawas' robes are a bit too light.)


In the morning, I used a box mix chocolate cake (Devil's Food) to make 2 dozen cupcakes.  Make the cupcakes kind of small - you want to minimize the crown as much as possible.  Jawa's like flat-topped cupcakes!  For fun, I used Star Wars cupcake papers from Party City.

While the cupcakes cooled, I rolled and baked the cookies.  As Jenn's blog shows, use the Star Wars jawa  cookie cutter from Williams-Sonoma, place the cookie on the baking sheet, then cut out the jawa's face.  I also dusted the cookies with a bit of cinnamon-sugar to give the robes some texture.

You'll need 24 cookies for the cupcakes.  My recipe makes several dozen, so I made the rest wookies and droids and we just ate those! (The dough was a good color for the wookies!) 

While the cookies were cooling, I made chocolate icing for the cupcake.  Jenn used a dark chocolate peanut better icing, but I wanted plain chocolate.   I used a pre-made dark chocolate icing for D*C, which looked great, but tasted lousy.  For these, I used my favorite homemade chocolate icing recipe, one from Alton Brown (Good Eats) - recipe is in the side linked page.   This icing is spectacularly yummy, but very light colored.  I was okay with that for these.  If you wanted darker icing, either use a dark chocolate recipe or else add brown coloring.

Accent the Jawa with 2 orange nonpareil or sugar eyes. Tip: use tweezers to place the eyes close together.  UUTINI!!!! 

To Summer & Beyond (Easy)

This is a set of seven small (mini) cakes that I did for all the kids that had summer birthdays in my son's class.

Each child got his/her own personalized cake, which they loved! My "theme" was space, with a rocket traveling past all the birthday planets towards the "Jr. High Galaxy" at the other end of the board. Most of the cakes were a made in a 6" pan - Wilton round or small paisley, with the square chessboard cake, Spain, rocket and top of the acropolis cut from sections of a rectangular sheet cake. (For Spain, I printed a picture of Spain, then traced it with a knife to get the shape.) I decorated the cake with tinted buttercream and fondant decorations. See the notes by each picture for more detail. Overall, the cakes took about six hours to finish, but the kids were so excited! Priceless!

Rocket
This was just for fun.  I cut the shape from a larger rectangle of cake, then tapered the sides.  Frosted with large white buttercream stars.  The wings, window and flames are fondant.












Summer in Spain
I cut the shape of Spain out of a rectangular cake and then iced with yellow and red buttercream to mimic the Spanish flag.  I printed a copy of Picasso's Guernica and laminated it using laminating sheets from Office Max.  The little girl is made from fondant. (Note - I fixed the sign to say "feliz cumpleanos" before I served it!)










Camping Trip
The tent is made from graham crackers covered in fondant.  The tree is a sugar cone covered with kelly green stars (using the Wilton #16 tip).  The boy are bear are fondant.  This cake uses the small paisley pan.







A Summer of Baseball
This cake was made with 1/2 of the Wilton sports ball pan.













Chess Camp
Square cake frosted with white buttercream then I overlaid white and black fondant squares (rolled very thin and cut with a ruler) to form the chess board.  I used real chess pieces on top.

Beach Vacation
Round cake frosted with ivory-tinted buttercream.  The sand castle elements are made of fondant - there is a bucket on the other side that you can't see.  I dusted the whole cake with a mix of brown and light sugar to make the sand-effect.  There is a pressed fondant crab on the side.






Summer in Athens (the Acropolis)
This cake was a bit more complex - it's a 6" round cake topped with a rectangle of cake cut from a large cake (that also gave me Spain, the rocket and chessboard).  Covered with white buttercream.  The columns on the Parthenon are white chocolate dipped pretzels.   The top is fondant, with little fondant figures. 

Star Wars Fabrics

Joann Fabrics has a great assortment of different Star Wars fabrics! When I wanted Star Wars fabric for a project last fall, I could not find anything - ended up have to use an odd twin bed sheet - so I was happy to be able to stock up now.

I'm not much for sewing, but I did take a few hours to make my boys PJ pants with one of the fabrics.

This is a very easy project - I have a Singer Stylist portable sewing machine. I used Simplicity "Learn to Sew" pattern 2290. You get patterns for child and adult pants in the package. The instructions were easy-to-follow. I needed to add a fair bit of length for my tall, skinny kids, and the instructions covered that. Be sure to wash, dry and iron your fabric before you start.

The Shocking & Incredible Truth about Saint Patrick

HE WASN'T BORN ON MARCH 17!
HE WASN'T IRISH!
HE WASN'T EVEN NAMED PATRICK!!!

But he is the Apostle of Ireland and an exceptionally cool dude! This is his story.

Patrick's name was probably Maewyn. He was born to Christian parents in Briton (near Scotland) around 400 A.D. He was kidnapped by Irish pirates at age 16, taken to Ireland and sold into slavery. He was forced to tend sheep for his captors. While tending the sheep, he spent a lot of time praying and discovered his love of God. He also learned the local language and customs.

After six years tending sheep, Patrick claimed that an angel told him it was time to leave Ireland. He escape from his captors and walked almost 200 miles to the Irish coast. He returned to his home, then entered a monastery in France to study religion. He studied for 15 years and became a priest. He was given the name Patrick by the Catholic Church. Patrick heard another voice too, telling him to return to Ireland. Around 437 A.D., he returned to Ireland to minister to the small number of Irish Christians and to covert the pagan Irish Druids to Christianity.

Patrick led one of the most successful, non-violent religious conversions in history. He used Druid and Celtic symbols to explain Christian concepts. For example, he incorporated fire into Christian celebrations because the Druids used fire to honor their gods. He even imposed a circle on the Christian cross – creating the Celtic cross – because the worship of disks honoring the sun and moon goddesses was very common. Patrick said that the circle represented the eternal and endless nature of God’s love.

The shamrock (or “seamroy” in Celtic) grows all across Ireland – helping to give the land the name “Emerald Isle.” The shamrock was considered a sacred plant because it symbolized the rebirth of spring. Patrick is said to have used the shamrock’s leaves to explain the Christian concept of the Trinity - one God composed of three divine beings, the God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Legend says that Patrick performed a miracle by driving all of the snakes out of Ireland. In reality, there were no snakes in Ireland! But serpent symbols were used by the Druids, and Patrick’s missionary work did help end that practice.

Patrick spent the rest of his life working as a missionary in Ireland. He died on March 17, probably in 493 A.D. During his lifetime, he founded more 365 churches – almost all with a school – and devoted his whole life to promoting Christianity, doing good works and taking care of the Irish people. He spent a great deal of time in prayer. He also wrote several important religious texts, including his Confessions.

Patrick is one Ireland’s three patron saints, along with Bridget and Columba. These three saints are buried together in Downpatrick Ireland. Saint Patrick has been honored with religious services on March 17 since his death. The first Saint Patrick’s Day church service in the U.S. was held in Boston in 1737.

Today we celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with parties and parades. The first Saint Patrick’s Day parade was held in New York City on March 17, 1762. On that day, Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched to celebrate their Irish roots. People around the world still “wear the green” and celebrate all things Irish on March 17 in honor of this great man.

Dalek Cake With Light, Sound and Motion - Insane

This was an extreme cake for a group of elementary and jr. high robotics team members - it's 1/2 cake and 1/2 actual mutant Dalek.



For the cake:
The cake is seven 11x15 layers of cake, with cake boards and dowels between layers 4 and 5. (I made a serious error and used non-stick cake boards, which caused the layers to separate during transport - don't do that!) Buttercream between the layers. Carve the front and back to make the classic Dalek body shape. Crumb coat with buttercream, then frost with buttercream tinted golden yellow (or whatever color you like).

To get a sense of size - this cake required 16 box mixes (8 each chocolate and yellow cake), 4 dozen eggs, 8 cups of oil... plus approximately 8 lbs of powdered sugar for the buttercream along with 16 sticks of butter, 8 sticks of Crisco, 1 full bottle of vanilla... you get the idea! But it had to be big to scale with Greg's top.

For the knobs, I melted white chocolate and molded it using the Wilton "Dessert Domes" candy mold, the middle size dome. Apply these to the cake before the buttercream sets, and use some additional icing to help secure the candy. You need approximately 56 of the domes - 14 rows of 4, for an authentic Dalek. [Note - the mold instructions tell you to freeze the candy, but don't do that - it gets too brittle and the domes crack. Just let them set in the refrigerator.]

To finish, I airbrushed the cake with gold paint - I have a new "Duff's" airbrush machine and used the Duff's gold color paint. Very pleased with this.

Note that this "finished cake" is actually a shadow of what the cake could have been. As mentioned above, I used non-stick cake boards between the layers. I wanted to able to easily separate the layers for serving. I made a critical error, however, in that I doubled the cake boards so it would be non-stick on both sides. When we were moving the cake in the car, the layers slid apart, doing major damage. I had 40 minutes before the party, so I got my Mom (God Bless Mom!) to drive over so Greg could run to the store for canned icing - I reassembled the layers as best I could in the back of his car. I pulled off all the knobs, reiced with vanilla icing (mixed as best I could with the yellow/gold) and replaced the knobs. It was a good save, and the cake was still a hit thanks to Greg's magic top. (But UGH!)

The real magic of this cake is the Dalek top, which Greg built. As one friend noted: "authentic BBC special effects!" (That was meant as a compliment.)



Here is Greg's write-up:

The "brain" of the Dalek is an Arduino Uno microcontroller with an Adafruit Wave Shield added to give it audio capability. The head movement is done with a standard high-torque servo and an added pushbutton triggers activity. The arduino is powered with 8 AA batteries. The arduino can't produce much volume by itself, so the audio goes through a Bump 3.5mm Portable Mini Speaker (which has an internal battery charged over USB.)
The non-cake portion of the Dalek has three components. The top dome is half of an 8" styrofoam ball (covered with masking tape so it can be painted with standard paint). The "ears" are empty glass Testors paint jars with internal LEDs. The eye stalk is a 1/2" cardboard tube with a styrofoam ball (again taped and painted). The blue LED in the center of the eye is hard-wired to a CR2032 battery so that it is always on. The bottom side of the dome has a lego gear with 8 pins that sync with the servo when the dome is set upon the layer below.
The middle part of the Dalek assembly is made of circular pieces of MDF, cut with a Dremel circle cutter. The bottom is solid, middle two boards are only 1" wide rings and the top is a ring with a center bar where the servo is mounted. The layers are spaced with 1" lengths of PVC pipe. All the electronics, batteries and speaker fit inside this assembly. To hide these components, the inside of the ring is lined with thin, dark gray foam that was packing material.
The top and middle component are also linked with wires for the "ear" lights. These lights are synchronized with the audio through a simple circuit that can be found here. The wires just run through the access holes cut in the top ring of the middle element, and the motion of the top is limited so that the wires don't restrict the motion.
The bottom part of the Dalek assembly is a made of a 4" high, 8" diameter styrofoam cylinder glued to a 9" diameter bottom "plate". Onto this assembly are glued trapezoids cut from foam board to create the octagonal sides. Joints are taped and the assembly painted. The Dalek "gun" is a wire whisk with a roll of paper tucked inside, set in a black PVC pipe. The "sucker" is a funnel covered in black tape and mounted in a PVC pipe. Both the gun and sucker fit in holes cut in the foam board and are then shoved into the styrofoam inside.
The controlling software for the Dalek is about 250 lines of C code, mostly derived from an example program provided with the Wave Shield. The approach is pretty simple. At setup time, the program creates a list of all the .WAV files at the top level of the SD card filesystem. Then it enters a loop, waiting for a button press. Upon button press, the code selects an audio file at random and commands the wave shield to start playing it. While the audio file is playing, the code generates a random position value and commands the servo to move to it, delaying for a period of time based upon the distance to be moved so that the servo has time to move. This is done repeatedly until the wave shield indicates that the WAV file is done playing. Then the servo is moved back to the neutral central location and we go back to waiting for the next button press. (Actual code can be provided upon request.)


Also - thanks to my British friend Mark who provided the voice talent for the Dalek's "gracious professionalism" speech! That's the robotics program credo, so a nice finishing touch!

Peace on Endor - Medium

I made this cake for my Star Wars friends for our annual Life Day Party:  Peace on Endor!  Good Will to All Beings!

I made the fondant figures in advance:  Jawas untangling a box of Christmas lights, a Wookie and Ewok family decorating a tree with imperial helmets...

 

The wookie looked like he might have been in the eggnog.  (Plus he was a little tipsy on the cake!)

Secure the standing figures to the cake with skewers or toothpicks.  (The baby ewok is just sitting on the cake, with her candy cane, as is the kneeling jawa.  The standing jawa is built on a part of a sugar cone, so very stable.  I used orange nonpareils for the eyes.)

I baked a 14" round cake plus the small paisley cake.  I used 3 box mixes across the 2 pans.  Let cool and cover with white buttercream.

To make the tree, cover a plain sugar cone with green stars (using #16 Wilton tip and a tube of green icing) - pull the stars a bit as you release, to make "branches."  Decorate with small lights from a craft store, candies, and helmets.  Affix Lego helmets with a bit of green icing.  

On the top layer, we had Darth "I find your lack of Festivus disturbing" Vader with a Festivus pole. 

Just because.  Happy Holidays!  (And may the Force be with you, throughout the year!)

Reindeer Cake - Easy and Very Fun

For the holidays!

This cake is made using the Wilton "Rudy Reindeer" pan, which is discontinued but still available on eBay.  (Note - Wilton has instructions for all the pans online, so if you find an old pan, you can get the instructions easily!)   Even without the pan, you can put the reindeer on any large sheet cake.

To make this version:  frost the cake with white buttercream.  Outline the ear, mouth, chin and eye using a tube of chocolate icing.  Reserve a bit of white buttercream for the bottom stars.

Tint the buttercream tan for the ears and antlers.  Use a #16 tip (small open star) for the ears and around the eye.  Pull the stars a bit to create a feathered look at the top of the ear.  Use a serrated basketweave tip (such as #47) to make the antlers. (Don't worry if the lines overlap.)  Make sure you pipe with the serrated edge up, to create the ridges on the antlers.

Tint the tan buttercream a darker brown and use a larger open star tip (such as #18) for the rest of the deer.  Using black icing from tube, pipe the eye, with a round tip (#3).  Accent with green icing from a tube (also using a round tip, #2).  Let the black set for a few minutes, then pat it smooth with a very clean,very dry finger.  Add the white accent with a #2 tip.

Using red icing from a tube, outline the bow (#3 tip) then fill in with stars.  (You can also make the bow green if you prefer, or mix red and green.)

Using the green tube (#2 tip), pipe a "cord" around the antlers, then add colored spice drops for lights.  I usually pipe a "plug" (like a filled in 1/2 circle with prongs) on the back.  Add the red nose - a sour cherry ball.

Finish with white stars on the bottom, add red/green M&Ms if desired.