Hamish’s birthday marathon ended this weekend with a Laser Force party with his mates. The third and final cake was served – a Lightsaber birthday cake! Next year’s birthday will definitely be celebrated on one day…with one cake.

I was quite daunted at the idea of making a Lightsaber cake, but it actually wasn’t too hard at all.

I started by tracing the boys light saber to create a pattern.

I baked a large 28cm square butter cake using the recipe I used to make the Rainbow Cake last weekend, taken from Count It All Joy.

This is such an amazingly simple butter cake recipe. I just doubled the quantities.

Butter Cake
from Count It All Joy

1 1/2 cups Self-raising flour
1 cup White sugar
1/2 cup of Milk
2 Eggs
125g Melted butter
1 tsp Vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius conventional or 160 degrees Celsius fan-forced. Put all ingredients in a bowl and beat on medium speed for five minutes. Pour into a lined cake pan.

I then placed the pattern onto the finished butter cake and cut out the shapes to make something that looked a little like a lightsaber.

At this point Hamish was very concerned. I had planned to ice the light section with butter icing and the handle with rolled fondant.  But after seeing the ups and downs of these little pieces of cake I decided to ice the whole cake in rolled fondant.

I mixed some blue powdered colouring into the rolled fondant to create just the right shade for the light.  I brushed some slightly heated apricot jam over the whole cake and then rolled the fondant to create a piece just a little larger than the cake.  I placed the rolled fondant to cover the cake and then cut the excess carefully with a knife. I then repeated this with a white piece of fondant for the handle.  Hamish then provided the creative direction with some licorice strips and extra fondant.  A little tip is to heat the licorice just  a little to make it more pliable.

In the end the cake was slightly lumpy and bumpy, but overall met the brief.  I wonder what the little one will want for his birthday cake in July!