I make my boyfriend an elaborate, appropriately-themed birthday cake every year (this is the fifth one). This year, I had been planning to make an R2D2 (a 'resourceful astromech droid' from Star Wars) cake, for awhile; even before the big hype for the release of the latest Star Wars film. I had looked at several different designs - one of them just the relative shape from a 9x13 inch rectangular cake and one used a 9x13 inch rectangular cake as the base, with half a nine inch round cake as the head, and some extra side pieces. These two dimensional designs looked pretty neat, but I then came across a three dimensional design that used several layers of six inch round stacked cakes, a six inch dome cake for the very top, and a 9x13 inch rectangular cake for the arms and extra pieces. I knew after upgrading from a 2-D to a 3-d cake last year (an army tank cake), I had to continue the theme - I couldn't go back to 3-D. The design seemed simple enough, I was just slightly concerned with stability. Also, that was a lot of cake - so I scaled back the design to be slightly smaller, doubling my batch of cake to make two 9x13 inch rectangles.
I always ask for my boyfriend's input on his cakes, and he usually likes a surprise for the design, knowing I will come up with something cool, but this year he requested the flavor. He asked for a chocolate raspberry cake, and because I had been experimenting with a lot of vegan baking lately, he wanted it to be vegan. Easy enough, I whipped up a recipe and it turned out great. The icing was a whole different story. I could have easily made a faux buttercream using either vegetable shortening (gross) or vegan margarine, but I was trying to make a naturally vegan icing, and I also wanted it coconut flavored. I made what I thought was a yummy icing, but then assembly time came.
I froze the cakes briefly to make them easier to work with, then cut them and froze them again while snacking on the scrap pieces that confirmed this was one delicious cake. I had made the icing in advance to give it time to firm up in the fridge. I coated the individual pieces with a crumb coat, and chilled them to set it. Then I tried to put the pieces together and add more coats of icing to cover. The problem was, even after adding more icing sugar to make the icing quite thick, the icing just kept sliding off the cake. It seemed to stick, only to slide off a few minutes later. It was very strange. I am figuring it must be my new icing recipe, as I usually stick to my regular buttercream. It's hard enough to complete incase a dark chocolate cake with white frosting, but add a frosting that doesn't stick, and you've got a problem. I even tried piping the icing on in lines, which seemed to work but it still slid off later. At least the pieces were sticking together, so I covered it as best as I could, added some vegan meringue 'buttons' and piped some blue frosting on as well for details. I crumbled extra meringue, dusted it with cocoa powder, and placed it at the bottom to make some dirt from the planets. And with my leftover cake scraps, I managed to make some other Star Wars themed characters (using chocolate icing that did not slide), which I will share in another post.
The cake didn't turn out how I wanted, but it did stay in one piece, hold it's shape, and taste delicious. I will definitely have to make another R2D2 cake in the future, with a different frosting, to make the details more accurate and have it look pure white. A white fondant covering would definitely be ideal, though I am not a fan of the stuff. Nevertheless, taste is most important right? At least that's what the birthday boy told me.
Happy Birthday my love! :)
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