The Star Wars Cake

So having 3 boys, I was bound to do a Star Wars cake along the way. This cake was chosen by my middle son for his 6th birthday. For all you non Star Wars fans, it is a depiction of Tatooine (the home planet of Anakin and Luke Skywalker).

For the top layer I used frosting. Looking back, I probably should have done fondant. With this cake, I learned the big mistake with not doing what's called a "crumb layer". Basically, what that is is a thin layer of frosting over the cake to "trap" in the crumbs. After you do this, you place the cake in the fridge to allow the frosting to harden. Then, you do another layer of frosting that comes out nice and clean without any messy crumbs showing through. I had quite a few messy crumbs showing through the blue on this cake.....lesson learned!

The buildings of Tatooine are made from fondant as well as the "rocks" and moons. The sand on this cake is brown sugar. It was a bit darker than the Graham Cracker crumbs, which is why I chose to use that.

The characters are just the plastic figures. I have been asked why I didn't make them from fondant. Basically, I was only 3 weeks out from doing the Jungle Cake. I was still exhausted from that...lol!