A for Effort???

My husband's friend requested a Storm Trooper cake for his son's party.  His wife found a youtube video showing how one mom made it so I thought I'd give it a try.  Next month my oldest son is having a Star Wars party so this was going to be good practice.  Most of the examples on the internet are made with fondant, which I don't use.  Unfortunately, the cake was WAY harder than it looked and didn't turn out that great.  However, I thought the technique was pretty cool and could be tweaked to make lots of different of cakes.  So, here's how I did it...not my best work, but definitely my best effort.

I made simple syrup for the first time, with equal parts sugar and water that I boiled in a pot.  I added a whole lemon to it as well.  Then I used buttercream frosting and my Kitchen Aid mixing bowl as a mold.

I lined my Kitchen Aid bowl.  Plastic wrap would work but I usually end up annoyed with it so I went with good old wax paper instead.

I made 3 cakes and sliced them in half.

I placed one half of a cake in the bottom of the bowl and pushed it down.  I drizzled simple syrup over it and then added a layer of frosting.  

I continued layering cake with simple syrup and frosting until I reached the top of the bowl.

I placed the entire thing in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

I set the bowl upside down and removed the cake, which to my surprise, came out really easily.

I used one of the left over cakes to make the details on the top, front and sides.  I also did some cut outs on the cheek area.

I did a basic crumb coat all over the entire thing and placed it back in the refrigerator.

The entire time I was making it my kids kept reminding me that it didn't look like a Storm Trooper at all and it looked more like an igloo.  I had to agree with them.  Luckily the details brought it together in the end.

The last part was adding the details which were pretty simple to do.  The hardest part was trying to get the buttercream smooth.  Obviously I gave up on that!  It was getting messier and messier the more I fussed with it so I decided that it was as smooth as it was going to get.

So here it is...

I think if the bowl was taller the proportions would have been better.

  Since I'm not a baker I didn't realize you could put an already baked cake into a mold.  This could definitely lead to other possibilities down the road.

Hopefully I can tweak it a bit for my son's party.  Or maybe I'll do something completely different.  At least I learned something new regardless of the end result.  It was a first attempt and something I can work to improve on.