Life-Size, Storm-Trooper Cake Hits Sci-Fi Convention
"Star Wars" fans can finally have their cake and eat it, too: Husband-and-wife team Tiler and Amanda Oakleaf created a 6-foot-4, 300-pound storm-trooper cake for a science-fiction convention in Boston. The cake fed roughly 600 sci-fi fans.
"We had planned on doing a humanoid sort of cake for awhile, we were looking for something that could be segmented and the storm trooper fit that description," bakery owner Amanda Oakleaf said on how the idea came about.
It took the team of 10 people at Amanda Oakleaf Cakes of Winthrop, Mass., two weeks to put the storm trooper together. The cake part of the storm trooper and frosting was added two days before the convention.
Much of the planning involved determining dimensions and perfecting the Rice Crispy legs of the trooper: "We had a couple of long nights. We have a crew of 10 and at least everyone had a part in it," Oakleaf said.
The cake required 208 eggs, 140 pounds of sugar and 55 pounds of marshmallows.
The internal structure of the cake, or skeleton, was made of iron pipe and plastic. The most difficult part of the cake was "the height; there were a few things we had to re-do." Another difficulty, she says, was making the cake more modular and hiding the fondant seams. They had done a few figurines and sculpted cakes but never something of this caliber. To Oakleaf's knowledge, they are the first to have created such a human-like cake.
"Fondant doesn't want to hang on to 20 inches or so. The cake was so massive. We made extra sacrifices on time because we wanted it to taste good. It was the same quality as all of our wedding cakes," Oakleaf said.
The cake was a yellow vanilla cake made with vanilla Italian meringue butter cream. Italian meringue butter cream is an extra silky butter cream commonly used to decorate wedding cakes. Marshmallow fondant was used on the outside, as well as for most of the detail.
Although it was only a 20-minute drive for them, it took a crew of five to deliver and assemble the cake at the convention.
Do you want this cake at your next party? You'd better save your money. "We've had a few requests," Oakleaf said. "We donated that one for the event. We figured with the amount of time spent on it, it would be a $9,000 cake."