Ann Reardon

Awesome spinning BB-8 Cake

spinning bb8 cake
 
 

There has been an awakening … a spinning BB-8 cake!! Yes this cute rolling droid almost stole the show in the new Star Wars movie and I just knew I had to come up with something special to represent his clever mode of transport. Star Wars is a big thing in my house full of boys. Have I ever told you about the time when I was 9 months pregnant (10 days overdue in fact) with our first child. Well finally, in the middle of the night my waters broke and guess what, my husband wasn’t home! Where was he? Dave was at the midnight screening of Star Wars Episode 2 of course. So I guess it’s no surprise that 13 years later he took our two eldest boys went to the very first midnight screening of Star Wars 7 the Force Awakens. As for me, I saw it a week later at a much more civilised hour. Oh and don’t worry, Dave did make it home in plenty of time to get me to the hospital.

 

To make this Star Wars BB8 cake you will need:

Fondant cutting template

20cm (7.87 inches) Hemisphere tin
11cm (4.33 inches) round bowl for the head
round cutters and round piping tips for cutting and indenting any of these sets will do
20cm (7.87 inches) round cake board (you can cut your own from board and cover in foil)
Lazy Susan I have this one
Non-stick baking paper (the best thing to roll your fondant when cutting out details)
MDF wooden board, mine is 50cm (19.69 inches) x 45cm (17.72 inches)
cake shine
1.5 x my chocolate cake recipe baked at 170C (338 degrees Fahrenheit)
2 x my basic buttercream recipe (or you can choose a flavour)
600g (21.16 ounces) white fondant
100g (3.53 ounces) orange fondant (I used yellow and copper food colouring to get BB-8 orange)
60g (2.12 ounces) black fondant
200g (7.05 ounces) grey blue fondant for the sky (or you could colour buttercream)
Black gel food colour
Silver luster dust
Brown luster dust
Plain biscuits for the sand (I used different biscuits/cookies to give the two shades of sand).

Wrap a sheet of baking paper around the edge of the hemisphere tin and secure into place at with a staple. Do the same on the little bowl. Spray or wipe each one with vegetable oil so the cake does not stick.

Preheat the oven to 170C (338 degrees Fahrenheit). Make a batch of 1 and a half times my rich chocolate cake recipe and pour it nearly to the top of each tin. Bake them in the oven, place an empty tray on the top shelf to stop the bigger one from burning on top before it’s cooked through.

Once they are baked and cooled level off the top while they are still in the bowl. Tip them out of the tin.

Place the bigger one on the cake board. Cover the whole thing in a layer of buttercream. Then use a sheet of thin plastic or acetate to smooth off the frosting. Place that in the fridge for the buttercream to firm up.

For the head, cut about 1/3 off so that it will sit upright. Then place it next to the tin to see where to cut (see video). Cover in buttercream frosting.

Now roll a thin cylinder of white fondant for his aerial and leave it to one side to dry out.

Cover the body and the head in white fondant. Then add a circle of black and then white to the base of the head.

Using the template cut the details of the head and put into place. Draw the indents on the head. For the silver parts cut them out of black fondant and then dust them with silver luster dust.

Cut the orange ‘circles’ out of fondant and add into place. Then cut the silver parts from black fondant and dust with silver luster dust. Add into place on his body.

bb8 cake how to cook that
Draw lines between the circles and then add indents for the joiners.

Cover the MDF board in plastic wrap and add a Lazy Susan upside down. Spread buttercream across the bottom half of the board, smoothing over the Lazy Susan so you can’t see a lump.

Process the biscuits until they are fine. And sprinkle that over the buttercream. Then add a strip of grey blue fondant to the top of the board.

Use some brown powdered food colouring and using a dry brush dust it around the joins and the orange.

star wars bb8 cake reardon

Add the body into place. Making sure it is exactly central. Position BB8’s head into place just above the body and check it can spin past. Crush up some different coloured biscuits and add them for BB8’s shadow.

Roll a ball of black for his eye, cut it in two, then take it outside and spray it with cake shine.
Bring them back inside and add them into place on the head.

bb8 cake spins tutorial how to
by Ann Reardon.
Copyright © 2016 Reardon Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. How To Cook That

My Cookbook

ann reardon crazy sweet creations cookbook
Stores that sell my book listed by country: http://bit.ly/ARcookbook
All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.

61 Comments View Comments

  1. Rating: 5

    Hi Ann,
    I’ve been following your videos and recipes (and made a few of them for my son’s birthday!) for quite a few years. =)
    He wanted a BB8 cake this year so I tried to download the template but encountered a problem.
    It seems the payment went through, but all I got was an error page.
    I have attached the screenshot of the payment and the error message.

    If you can please email me the template, that would be really appreciated!
    (I’m in a rush as the party is in a few days!!)

    Thanks heaps,
    Andrea

  2. Rating: 5

    Hello! I’m planning to try to make this amazing cake for my (Star Wars mad!) brother’s 40th birthday. Fingers crossed!! Using your recipe as directed, how long should I bake the cake for in the large hemisphere tin please? There’s no suggested time in the recipe or the video. Obviously I will do the ‘press test’ and test with a skewer to make sure it is cooked through at the end of the bake, but I don’t want to keep opening and shutting the oven door too early and letting the cold blasts of air in. Could you possibly give me an estimated cooking time please? Very many thanks! ?

    • Hi Lisa, Sorry I must not have written it down, it will take a while though. To give you a guide… when baked in a flat tray this recipe only takes 15 minutes, but in a round 8″ cake tin it takes about 40minutes so I’d expect it would be more than 40 minutes.

  3. Hi were can i found the draw from where you cut the fondant? is there a link anywhere?
    thank you very much.

    • Hi Sofia, Use the Buy it NOw button to purchase the tempalte or you can find all the available templates on the shop tab at the menu at the top of the page.

      • No Sorry, I couldn’t explain myself because I am Italian. I meant the drawings of the decoration part that you printed (the one that can give you the shape of the foundant) where did you find them? Hope it is more clear now. Sorry, again.

        • The “template” you called it maybe.

          • Sorry you understood right. I found it. Thank you very much.

  4. Rating: 4.5

    Max’s 1st birthday cake!

    • Hi Kristin, your BB8 looks amazing! What a treat for Birthday #1!.

  5. Rating: 4.5

    Thank you, Ann, for showing me how to make this awesome cake for my son Max’s 1st birthday! I’ve defin set the bar for all the rest of his birthday cakes!

    • I do wonder what you will make next???

  6. Rating: 5

    Hello from Poland!
    It was a really fantastic experience to prepare this cake for my son’s 10th birthday party. Watching kids’ surprised faces while spinning the cake – priceless;-)
    Thanks for all the ideas for amazing cakes and desserts.

    • Great job Anna. Awesome cake!

  7. Rating: 4.5

    Made this cake a while ago at a Star Wars sleep over marathon with my BFF. I am 14 and my mom thought I was crazy, but it was tons of fun and turned out great! I have a video of it spinning to. 🙂

    • That is amazing Illiana. Great work.

  8. Rating: 4

    Hi Ann, SOS Please help!!!
    How long is the cake suppose to cook for in the hemisphere tin? (I have an 8″ as your measurements = 7.87 so assuming I got the right one)
    I’ve tried your chocolate cake recipe, as per the link, and it took over 2hrs (160deg), as it was taking so long in the middle but unfortunately a section came away when getting it out of the tin and the sides seem a little overdone. I tried again with two packet mixes – it was in for an hour and five minutes, tester came out clean and then it sank – completely uncooked – 80%. I don’t know why I’m having such bad luck!!
    I love your tutorials and made the lego batman for my youngest sons b’day last year and trying to get this one done for saturday. Any hints would be appreciated – even how to salvage/ stick together the one that stuck??!
    In anticipation….. 😉 Clare

    • Hi Clare, I am a big fan of of buttercream or ganache (or the two mixed together) for emergencies. That may be the best way to salvage the broken one. The cake should not take that long to cook, so it sounds likemy our oven temperature may be out. That isn’t solvable in a couple of days as it often means getting your oven thermostat repaired. A short term option would be to up the temperature 10 degrees or so but place an empty baking tray above the cake on the top rack. This will help minimize the risk of burning. The other option would be to divide your batter between a standard round cake tin and a hemisphere pan. Use the round cake as a base and the reduced hemisphere as a cap. Join the two with buttercream. Shape the two joined cakes to get your full hemisphere shape.

  9. Rating: 4.5

    Hi Anne,

    I can’t wait to make this cake for my son’s birthday.

    Please can you tell me how many people it serves?

    Thank you 🙂

  10. Hello Ann,

    I’m going to be making this cake for my niece soon. However, she apparently doesn’t much care for chocolate cake. What recipe would be best to make with that in mind? The two choices I thought of where that I could just pull the cocoa from the recipe and replace the chocolate with white chocolate(perhaps using one less egg or thereabouts to make up for the lack of cocoa?) or use your sponge cake recipe but I wasn’t sure which would turn out best. She said she’s happy with white or yellow cake.

    Thank you so much and I hope to hear back from you, I’ve loved your cakes for quite awhile but this is my first time trying one of your amazing and fun designs.

    Thank you so much,
    Michelle

  11. thanks for letting me know Andrea, i will look into that & see if there’s a glitch.

  12. I tried over and over again to access your templates. When I click “Buy It Now” I just get this page refreshed. Can you help me?

    • Hi Susan, Is this working for you now? We have checked this regularly since your comment was posted and there is no obvious issue at our end.

  13. Rating: 5

    Thank you for this great tutorial and template! It was a huge success and everyone loved it!

    • Great work Erin!

  14. Rating: 4.5

    My wonderful niece discovered your spinning BB8 cake and was keen to make it for our Star Wars themed 5th birthday party for my son. We bought most of the items you listed, ran out of time to get the remainder, and she painstakingly made the cake. We used cellophane paper instead of blue fondant (she was quite tired of rolling out fondant by then!) and I added some decor items to the board that I had purchased prior to deciding to make this cake. The cake was marvellous and a real “crowd pleaser”! Here’s a pic of ours. Thanks for your wonderful instructions and videos!

    • Brilliant job!

  15. Hi Ann,
    where you buy that foam pad for move the cake?or you made it? i try to look online or shop around,can’t found it.
    Thank you.

    • Hi Zoe, I am not sure what you are referring to. There is an MDF board for the base. This is fibre board or timber and you can get it from a hardware store. The other item Ann uses is a ‘lazy susan’ and Ann has linked to one on Amazon in her recipe.

  16. Follow my previous post

    • Hi Roz, What a great effort and very creative problem solving. Well done!!!

  17. Thanks Ann for the great spinning idea.
    I had done it for my Big Boy turning 8 years old!
    Could not get the lazy Susan in time (as a last minute decision and only have a week to make it) So I came up my own idea by using the CD box to generate the spinning effect (and only the top CD is damaged… Others under are still usable afterwards lol) Here to share it with everyone ☺️

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