Fireman Sam vs. Darth Vader - A Mixed Up Cake for an Indecisive 4-Year-Old!

My son has two loves in life – Star Wars, and Fireman Sam. I had tried to get him to choose between the two for his 4th birthday cake but he kept changing his mind! Eventually, the day before his party, I sketched out a design for this mix & match cake and he LOVED it! So, to work…

The cake itself is a simple vanilla sponge with vanilla butter cream. The bottom tier is 8″ and the top tier is 4″. Both tiers have 3 layers for sponge.

The cakes are covered with colored fondant – I used pre-colored for the red and black to make it easier, but colored the flames and hose myself. I sprayed the black fondant with an edible silver lustre spray to make it a little more spacey.

To achieve the jagged edge, I created a template and cut each side out individually, then put them onto the cakes one at a time and eased the edges together in situ. I decorated each tier individually then lifted the top tier onto the bottom.

The flames were cut out freehand from yellow icing, and brushed with an orange edible lustre powder.

The stars are soft silver pearls that I pushed gently into the fondant with the aid of guide holes. I deliberately placed them at random intervals.

The Fireman Sam and Darth Vader figures are models that we had in the house, that I cleaned with boiling water before placing on the cake. The hose is simply rolled from fondant and left to set in the correct position for 24 hours. The water is edible paper colored with gel food coloring.

My only real disappointment was that I didn’t have time to leave the butter cream to harden before adding the fondant, which is why it has sagged a little around the edges.

On the day, my son loved his cake and so did all of his friends. I’ve just got to work out how to top it next year!