Do You See Something Wrong With This Picture?

OK--so it's not the greatest "Lord of Darkness" cake I've ever seen. But it's also not bad. Doing Vader is tough. He's all one color with subtle shades of black, black, and more black. I volunteered to do this cake for my nephew AJ's 7th birthday. I thought it would be fun and tracing pictures on a cake is really not that hard. It didn't occur to me until deep in the decorating that Vader was not going to be my best cake ever. That's fine because I actually learned a lot about tracing on cakes and have some thoughts on how to do this one better.

I wasn't pleased with how Vader looked but I decided to play around with it and see how I could spruce it up. I decided to add some giant shells around the border (tip 1M for those in the know) and was very pleased with how they looked. Easy and fast--I'm all about that. Then I decided to add some "funfetti" to the mix. This apparently, is when I lost my way. . .

Tom wanted to see the cake so I said it's in the fridge. I knew I was in trouble when I saw him staring at it for a minute or more. I thought to myself, "Oh great--Vader looks like crap." Instead he looked up at me quizzically while furrowing his brow and said "You put pastel sprinkles on Darth Vader." I was actually really confused by the remark because I really liked the way they looked. I guess I stared a little too long because Tom repeated himself, this time sounding slightly exacerbated that I didn't get his point.

Then it hit me. I put funfetti on Darth Vader. How uncool is that??? It's so clear my oldest is a girl because I thought pastel sprinkles would look cute on Vader. I totally missed the point of him looking dark, intimidating, menacing. I made him look cute, fun, practically huggable.

I stand by my funfetti decision. I like it. And so did the birthday boy. Here's some pics from the party:

Look at how excited AJ is. When did he grow up???? Check out that Darth Vader candle! Yes, I put funfetti on the sides too. . . .

Action shot
Looking cute! "Cake? Cake? Cake? Cake?"
This picture cracks me up. My dad is talking to Grace who is obviously telling some sort of tall tale based on the exacerbated look on Tom's face.