You guys know I don’t have any actual training in cake decorating, right? Whatever I do is self-taught, and I’m always looking for ways to simplify. So when my best friend asked me to make a small cake for her Star Wars loving son because she couldn’t find one at the grocery store bakery, I gave it a shot. I scrolled through pages and pages of Star Wars cakes on Google Images, many of them elaborate sculpted R2-D2s or giant Millennium Falcon models. I knew I wasn’t going to drape anything in fondant or pipe complicated patterns. (Have I said this before? I don’t like how fondant tastes, so I don’t use it.) Then I saw this cake and this cake. I decided the cake needed to be blue and say “Star Wars.” Anything else would be the proverbial icing.

Luckily, I had some of this food color spray left from another cake, and I decided to experiment with a stencil. I printed out the Star Wars logo and cut it out with a craft knife. I laid it gently on the frosted cake, sprayed a couple light coats of blue, and very gently lifted off the stencil. We found a Darth Vader candle at the party store and called it good. (Oh yeah, there’s some sparkling sugar scattered there as “stars.”)

If you can find a graphic that you can cut into a stencil, you can put anything on a cake to fit the birthday boy or girl’s interests. Don’t trust your piping skills (or lack thereof)? Stencil it!