Lawson Baked Davis's Birthday Cake

Knowing how much Davis loves Star Wars, and always willing to make something chocolate, Lawson decided to make his brother an R2D2 birthday cake. He started on it Friday night and finished it Saturday morning.

The project started by finding an instructional video on YouTube: Even though this video is in hyper-speed, Lawson thought he could follow it enough to make a cake of his own. In case anyone is interested in making this cake, here are some instructions in real time:

1. Make some cakes. Lawson's not an overachiever. He's not averse to using a cake mix. In fact, for this project, he used two boxes of Betty Crocker's chocolate fudge cake mix, which earned his school four Box Tops for Education. So Lawson's not only a generous brother, but a philanthropic student as well.

Both of my children love the opportunity to operate a machine, so Lawson broke out my Kitchen Aid mixer, which actually was due for some exercise. 

2.  Bake the cakes. Lawson used three 8" round cake pans for this project, and he baked them for thirty minutes at 350 degrees. That gave him a little break to join his brother in front of the TV. 

 

 

After all, one should always make time for an episode of "Hillbilly Handfishing."

3.  Once the cakes were done, he had to cut them  and shape into an R2D2 figure. He used icing to hold the different layers together and pieced the cake together on a cutting board. 

 

Then he spread icing over the top to smooth out the spaces between. His little R2 robot served as a model. 

3.  Then he made the legs out of Rice Krispy Treats, which he cut to match the angles of R2's little robot wheels. 

 

4. Next, Lawson iced the whole cake with white icing to make it look more R2ish. Chocolate is his favorite flavor, but he still opted for more authenticity. By the time he had the whole cake covered, it looked like a little mummy.

 

5. With blue and black icing, along with a blue sugar sheet, Lawson added the accents to turn that little iced mummy into the beloved Star Wars droid. 

 

 

I think Lawson's ready for Ace of Cakes! I hope Davis realizes what a cool brother he has. We'll be breaking into this tasty pastry tomorrow night when we have Davis's birthday dinner. 

Now, I wonder what cake Davis will bake next month when Lawson turns 13...

For the Reader's Digest version of Lawson's artistic process, you can view the following video:

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.