Star Wars Day--May the 4th Be With You!

I love the original Star Wars movies, but Return of the Jedi holds a special place in my heart.  Daring rescues, cool light saber fights and adorable Ewoks!  I clearly remember going to see it in the summer of 1983.  I had gone on a trip to California with a singing group I was in--and came home to hear about lots of flooding in Salt Lake City.  So much flooding that they created a "river" right through downtown.  Our family went to see the river and then headed to the Century Movie theaters--these awesome theaters that were in dome shaped buildings (at least I thought they were awesome).  I even got to buy treats with my leftover trip money. It was a pretty great day.

Tomorrow is May the 4th and to celebrate I decided to do some baking.  I went looking for inspiration on Pinterest and found a deliciously delightful blog called Yummy Crumble and knew this was the cake to make!  It didn't require a bunch of cake decorating skills like fondant or piping--but it is a multi-step messy process.  I made a few changes from the original because I couldn't find some of ingredients (and I didn't have a madeline cookie pan and neither did any of my neighbors).



Vanilla Bundt Cake
I liked the recipe on Yummy Crumble, so I'll send you over to her blog to get the recipe. Be sure to REALLY grease that bundt pan-mine was non-stick and I drowned it in non-stick spray and I still had one spot that didn't come out clean.  My cake took 43 minutes (I check it at 35 min and it was still really wet in the middle).  I did the cake first so that it could be cooling while I got the decoration stuff prepped.

"Sand" topping
Oatmeal cookies (the crunchy un-frosted kind from the cookie aisle)
Caramel topping (bottled from the ice cream section)





I used 12 cookies and pulverized them in the Vitamix.  Glaze the cake with a thin layer of caramel topping.  I spread it around with a rubber spatula and then pressed the cookie crumbs all over.  I did this while the cake was still on the cooling rack and on top of a cookie sheet to catch all the excess (and re-use the crumbs).

 

Sarlacc monster
Butterscotch chip jaws and tentacles
Almond slivers

I melted the chips in the microwave (heat in 30 second cycles and stir until all melty).   Put it in a zipper bag and clip the corner and pipe into 4 different fat squiggles for the tentacles.   For the mouth, I squeezed a rounded triangle shape onto a wax paper square and let it set for about 5 minutes and then draped it over a water bottle and popped it in the fridge (with a container on each side so it didn't roll around on me) to harden up. About 1 minute after it was in the fridge I used a butter knife to make some ridge marks on the back of the "monster." Honestly, this was the trickiest part--the water bottle really wanted to escape on me.  I used some white frosting to make teeth.




You stick the almond slivers around the inside, and then make a pile of frosting in the hole and set up the monster pieces.

I'll be serving this fine cake with some Yoda Soda (ginger ale) and some ice cubes from my fancy Darth Vader and Han Solo in Carbonite molds.  Should be a fun celebration.