So, you are thinking about making a Star Wars themed cake for a party. You have a couple of options but most of them are not cheap. If you want to go old school you can get the old school and completely outrageously prices character pans for Darth Vader [502-1409], C-3PO [502-2197] or R2-D2[502-1425] but those are from the 80's so you are going to be paying a premium price for them unless you come across used ones at a garage sale. So far there has only been one new Star Wars pan released so it remains to be seen if they are going to plan newer versions for the droids. There are other companies that have made Star Wars themed cake pans in the past but most of them are not licensed products.

Wilton Darth Vader Cake Pan
Product Number: 2105-3035
Suggested Price: $15.99

This is the new Darth Vader cake pan, the old one has a slightly different design to it. You are going to want to make sure that you are getting the new one by checking the product number if you are buying it online from a reseller; the old product number is 502-1409. What's the difference? The old design has a solid bottom neck area to it and there is no sharp slant to the side of the helmet so you are not getting the same type of detail that you are going to get from the new one. It's hard to say which one is nicer looking, that all boils down to personal preference. The newer one has more detail to the mouth area but the older one looks more menacing. They are both nice to work with but I never purchased the first version; when I had the chance to work with it I was not the least bit pleased with the fact that it was not non-stick. The old version pan yielded decent looking cakes but the newer one allows for more detailed cakes. I like that there is an actual neck to the new pan; it makes it look a little nicer when you are serving it.

The pan is not non-stick so you are going to want to make sure that the inside of it is well coated with a spray on release product or the old school flour and oil method. There is a good bit of detail to the center of it and that is where you need to be the most concerned with stickage. This is easy to decorate; you can do it in complete black or do a custom job to suit your needs. Yes, someone did attempt to make a pink Darth Vader cake but really screwed up on the eyes; they ended up sticking to the pan and even though they tried to use a couple of layers of icing to fill in the jacked up areas it didn't look right.

One of the hardest parts to decorate with icing is the mouth area; it's not impossible to get bakery quality results but you need to have a steady hand to make the lines straight. One option is to just leave it alone and detail the areas you know you can tackle. You are going to want to pay attention to the inside of the helmet, if you frost it the same way as the rest of it you are going to end up losing that part of the detail of it. If you don't want to fiddle around with icing or decorating this, you can use black food tint in the cake mix. If you are going to do with use a white cake mix so you can get a true black color from it. Another helpful thing is to use a spray on cake release product instead of using oil and flour; the second method can leave flour behind on the cake and it can be hard to get off if there are clumps or lumps of it.

The pan sells for $15.99 which is an interstellar rape; if it were non-stick it wouldn't be an issue but this is plain aluminum. You are paying for the Star Wars / Lucas licensing and the Darth Vader image. I got this because I need mental help and really wanted to see if I could recreate the Wilton imagery of it. It was close but it wasn't perfect.

Can beginners tackle this pan? Yes but decorating it is another story. If you don't have a lot of decorating experience under your cloak then you are going to want to use royal icing or do an all-black cake batter method. I did try to do a complete royal icing coating on this and it turned out okay but it wasn't as visually impressive as the one that took about two hours to decorate. I was taking my time with it so there is a chance I can cut that time in half if I do another buttercream frosting cake. Your results are going to depend on the amount of time you want to invest in decorating it. For something fast go with the black cake batter, you are going to have to go heavy with it in order to get it to not turn out gray. This means that there is a good chance that people are going to end up with "mouth rot" [temporary discoloration of the mouth] while eating it as well as the possibility of discolored urine or stool if they make a Hutt of themselves. It's rare that it happens but it does happen when you go heavy with a concentrated tint or dye.

It goes without saying that this is an awesome pan if you are in to Star Wars or you just want to freak out your normal friends with a unique dessert. I would love to try to make a black cherry ice cream cake with this but since it is aluminum I really don't think that I would be able to get the ice cream out without losing some of the detail. Quantities are limited and I have not seen these in local stores; I ordered my from the Wilton Online Store with no problem but if it is listed as sold out you are going to have to try back in a couple of days.


^V^ © Freak369 - 2012 ^V^


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Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): see review