Remember all those times I made fun of Jenny for the trauma she put herself (and her friends and family) through while making birthday cakes for her kids?
Yeah, I may live to regret that.
Sam’s birthday is Saturday and while I have commissioned his cake (and accessories) to hands much more capable than my own, I am going to attempt to make something for his preschool celebration on Friday.
After I spent tons of time googling “preschool birthday party snacks” obsessively over the weekend, my sister came up with a brilliant idea – chocolate covered pretzels made to look like lightsabers (because he is Star Wars crazy!).
So now I’m trying to figure out exactly how to make them REALLY look like lightsabers. Because the two- and three-year-olds in his class are really going to a) know what a lightsaber is and b) be concerned about the authenticity of their snacks.
But you know me – I always need something to make my life more difficult!
I’ve been doing some research and I have a couple different ideas, but I have no idea if any of them will work out. I’ve never used any of the products/methods I’m considering, but hey there’s no time like the present to learn, right?
Here are a couple of my ideas – let me know what you think will work best!
For the “light-up” part of the lightsaber, should I…
Use colored candy melts?
Dip in white chocolate and cover with sanding sugar?
Tint white chocolate with gel dye?
Spray white chocolate with color mist?
I don’t know!!!
And then there’s the issue of the handle part.
My original thought was to color the white chocolate black (or just use dark chocolate) and stick these on with icing:
Or, I could use silver color mist. But if I do that, how do I keep the colors from blending together? I don’t know how exact I can be with the spray.
Help!!!! How should I do this??
Yes, this is definitely going to end up like one of Jenny’s cake freak-outs, no doubt about it.
Stay tuned for frenzied middle-of-the-night tweets from yours truly!
haaaaaaaaaaaa HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! HA!
well first of all, you don’t want to use red candy melts because that is darth vader’s light saber. luke skywalker’s light saber is green. but then again, maybe you want a bunch of tiny sith lords wondering around your house…in that case, go with the red.
aside from the color, candy melts are SUPER easy to use. and you can get white ones and tint them lime green if you want to make luke light sabers. or white choc. with the lime green sanding sugar would look super cool and be super easy, as well. you can get black ones to do the handles but you might want to consider leaving the tip of them just pretzel so their grubby little sith lord hands have something to grab onto that isn’t chocolate.
for the silver accents, use silver sprinkles. i personally HATE the colored spray. i have had especially HORRIBLE luck with the silver spray. if you do decide to mess with it, DO NOT buy chef duff’s line of silver spray from michaels. it sucks. i returned mine at 8:30 pm in cake-covered PJs because i was mid-cake and it sucked so bad.
email me if you need more info.
My 2 cents is to dip the light saber end in red melting chocolate, let dry dip the bottom end in a dark dark chocolate and then wrap a piece of black licorice like the kind you can get that comes apart in strips and wrap that where the 2 colors meet and you are good to go. If you can tint some white chocolate blue then you can have red darth vader light sabers and blue jedi ones.
I think candy melts would be easiest and look the best. I think it would look cool to sprinkle them with a little sugar afterwards. Also, I have seen these made by wrapping the bottom in aluminum foil to make it look like handles and it makes for less mess because they aren’t holding chocolate. Good luck!
My vote is to use all chocolate since I think it would taste best. That said, I have an easy time working with it and have never tried the other methods.
I’d color the white choc for the laser part and use dark choc for the handles. Sounds Yummy to me!
I vote the candy melts as well! If you melt them in a small crock pot, they will stay warm for you to do a bunch! Also, you could get clear sanding sugar to roll them in as well, and the color of the chocolate will come through. If you try to make anything black, don’t start out with white chocolate. It will never turn black and will eventually get a bitter taste. Start with brown chocolate…the darker the better!
Again, Kroger, bakery, deja vu!
UP
I would make the handles with black gum paste. You can make rings around it with a toothpick & use chocolate to sitck on candy for buttons. Let them dry. dip the tip of the pretzel into the chocolate (Don’t use the colored candy coating, it is hard to get thin, use white & color it with CANDY COLORING) and stick it onto the dried handles. After they set, dip the rest of the pretzel in your candy coating & cover with sanding sugar.
Next time don’t spend $35 on supplies!! Buy a $.99 bag of pretzels and come over!!!
Light Saber cakes…done that. Fairy Princess Cookie Wands…done that.
Light Saber pretzels…no help.
Good luck.
Can I just say that I am laughing so hard right now!! I swear ever since you got that new oven/stove you have been baking up a storm and quite frankly it scares me!! LOL!!
Just kiddin’…I am proud that you are trying new things…but I still have to chuckle..if you need help with this whole project I’ll be around!! Good Luck!!
For realllzzz, I thought that idea would simplfy things. Just take a pretzel and dip it in colored chocolate and tell them its a light saber pretzel. i told Sammy that his stroller was a baseball stroller last year to get him in it. He bought it.