Star Wars Birthday Cake

5 from 1 vote

Here's an easy Star Wars birthday cake with a hand-painted Darth Maul image and his lightsaber in fondant. See my decorating tips here!

Prep Time20

Cook Time45

Decorating time1 30

Total Time2 35

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: six inches round cake

Calories: 10234.4kcal

600 g powdered sugar sifted
300 g butter salted
2 tablespoon milk optional
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Black cocoa powder Add to the buttercream for a truly black buttercream.
Black and golden yellow food color Americolor Black and Wilton Golden Yellow.
Edible silver dust + Lemon extract Mix these to form a thick silver paint.
Fondant Satin Ice in white and red.
CMC powder Added to fondant when making the 3D lightsaber

Start by getting the Darth Maul and Star Wars logo templates ready. You can either draw these by hand or print them off the internet. Resize them to fit your cake size.

Preheat oven to 170 °Celsius.
Beat butter and sugar till soft and creamy for about 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking powder, and salt. Fold in the sifted ingredients into the creamed mixture alternately with milk, starting and ending with flour.
Finally, add in vanilla extract and combine well. Pour batter into two greased and floured cake pans and bake for 45 to 50 minutes until the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed. The cakes are done when a skewer inserted in the center of the cake comes out without any wet batter.
Remove cakes from oven and let them cool completely before icing and decorating.
Baking time may vary slightly for larger cakes.
To make the buttercream frosting, place butter in a large bowl. Beat until creamy.
Add the sifted powdered sugar and continue to beat until the icing turns light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and sifted black cocoa powder and beat again until the vanilla is well incorporated.
Add the black food coloring. The icing color will deepen when left to rest for about 20 minutes, so do not add too much coloring. Let the icing rest for 20 minutes and if the color is not deep enough, add more. If the icing is too stiff, add some milk and beat again.
To decorate the cake, fill the cake layers with buttercream. Use the remaining buttercream to cover the whole cake and smoothen it.

Roll some yellow fondant (white fondant tinted with golden yellow food color) thin. Place the Star Wars logo paper template on the rolled fondant and cut it out with a sugar craft knife. The letters are a lot easier to cut when the fondant is slightly dry. So if you find it hard to cut the fondant, leave it out for a few minutes after rolling. Also, if you find it hard to keep the paper template in place, apply some shortening to the paper and attach it to the fondant. That way, the paper would not move much while you are working on it. Once done, simply peel off the paper.
Once all the letters were done, attach to the birthday cake. Since they were going onto a buttercream covered cake, no special glue is required. Simply press the letters into the buttercream until they are the same level as the icing. This will help to keep them in place without having to apply any special glue to them.

Roll a piece of white fondant, thin enough to be able to see through the Darth Maul template image when place underneath it.
Trace the face pattern along with all the lines on the face with a black edible marker.
Once the face is completely traced, use a pizza cutting wheel to cut the face out. And then paint it red and yellow using slightly diluted red and yellow food coloring.
After that, use the black edible marker to draw out all the lines again.

Start with the center part of the lightsaber in white fondant. Shape it by hand and imprint a couple of lines on both ends. After that, form deep indentations on the ends of each side. You can do this with a fondant shaping tool or simply with the back of large food painting brush.
Next, roll 2 equal-sized thin long strips in red. Attach them to ends of the white fondant earlier with a touch of glue.
Once completed, set the lightsaber aside to let the glue dry completely and all the components attach securely.
Only after it has set completely that you painted the white part of the lightsaber in silver edible paint. To make the paint, mix silver edible dust with a few drops of lemon extract. Mix until it forms a thick paint.
Again, set the lightsaber aside for the paint to dry completely before putting it onto the Star Wars cake.

While waiting for the paint on the lightsaber to dry, cut out the stars and lettering for the cake. Cut the stars in a few different sizes.
Use the same yellow fondant for the letters on the cake.

To assemble the cake, carefully lifted the Darth Maul’s image onto the cake with a wide icing scraper or a cake board and placed the topper on the cake. And then, place the letters to form the birthday person's name. Finally, with the remaining space on top of the cake, position the lightsaber.
To secured the cake toppers, gently press the Darth Maul image, the fondant letters name as well as the lightsaber into the buttercream on the cake such that they are all the same level as the buttercream covering on the cake. That way, the toppers will be held securely in place without the need for any special glue.
Once the top of the cake is done, attach the ‘Happy Birthday’ wording on the cake board on the front side of the cake. Use fondant glue to hold these in place on the cake board.

And finally, press in the fondant stars into the buttercream all around the cake. This can be done in random order, making sure they were well distributed all around the cake. Letting the stars to set slightly before putting them on the cake helped in making sure they do not lose their shape as you lift and press each one of them onto the buttercream.