May the Force Be With You, Again; Part One : making Jabba and Chewie

   

Some of you may remember my first Star Wars cake a few years ago, with a Chewbacca bust in a party hat and Scottcheroos in the shape of a carbonized Han Solo, if not you can find it here. I am not a total Star Wars fanatic, but I do love the characters, so was excitied to get a request for another Star Wars cake, with absolutely free reign as to the design !!!!!!!! My first step was a little doodle:

     I love making figures, and one of the advantages of a figure-heavy cake as opposed to sculpted, is that much of the work can be done ahead of time (although if you are like me you will end up doing it at the last minute anyway - damn you Netflix!).

     Before I begin on the figures I get my base board (for this I used 1/2" foam core), protected with aluminum foil, and some cake pans so I know how big I can make the figures and have them still fit.

 My first step is always kneading all the colors of modeling chocolate I will need :

      If possible I try and keep figures edible when I can, Jabba is a perfect example of this because , being a blob, doesn't need any internal supports. I smooshed together a Jabba shape with rice cereal treats to start with, forming it on the board

     After I have the rough shape I want, I start filling in the gaps with lumps of modeling chocolate:

 Then I start covering the entire thing with a thin layer of the modeling chocolate, color isn't important as this is just to smooth everything out for following layers:

 Smooth everything as much as possible:

 Starting to give a general idea of the features:

 Adding more modeling chocolate

 adding gumpaste eyes

 Now I roll out thin layers of the colored modeling chocolate and start applying them (I use a teeny tiny bit of water brushed on the back to apply)

 texturing with gumpaste/clay tools as I go along

 Jabba before his paint job

 And after, with the rest of the figures

 My hands down favorite of the bunch was Chewie though

For Chewie I started with a block of modeling chocolate instead of rice cereal treats , and toothpicks in the legs. I covered with more MC and textured with my gumpaste/clay tools