Maul Cake

One thing that I love about Star Wars and its impact on creative endeavours is that given how distinctive looking some of the characters are it’s so easy to make a work of art that is quite abstract but nevertheless represents a Star Wars character so unambiguously. It’s also one of the things that makes the Star Wars franchise such a gift to LEGO, who can bring out a set that requires a stack of bricks to end up resembling a character.

Enter Darth Maul, one of the most visually impressive characters in the franchise. Darth Maul has such an iconic look that he became a fan favourite, despite making his debut in The Phantom Menace, one of the most divisive Star Wars movies (and it didn’t help that he spoke no more than 33 words in this film). But he has nevertheless become a sensation, making appearances in the animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels, building himself a genuinly interesting story arc that culminated in this amazing YouTube tribute video by Darth Porg. But I digress. I knew as soon as I decided to start this blog that at some point, I would have to make a food project in aid of our favourite satanic looking space boy.

Wacky food based on Darth Maul isn’t new. A quick Google Image search will reveal a ton of Darth Maul themed birthday cakes. And then there’s this humous, coulis, and corn chip combination that is just haunting. However, I don’t think anyone has ever attempted a Darth Maul cake in quite the same way as I have. This cake is basically a twist on the idea of zebra cake, or tiger stripe cake.

When making the cake, I made the red stripes wider than the black stripes to best match what Maul actually looks like. Speaking of which, here’s a fun fact. As a kid, I always thought that Maul’s red and black stripped face was supposed to naturally look like that, but I since discovered that the black stripes are in fact tattoos given to the Nightbrothers of Dathomir.

A common issue that comes up when making projects like this is the conflict between making the food look good and making it taste good. Sometimes these things work together in perfect balance (like the force), but sometimes they clash, like they do for projects that require an insane amount of food colouring. The colour on this cake ended up perfect, but the colouring really didn’t do well for the taste. In fact, it almost tasted like play dough. If anyone is planning on making this at home, I would recommend going for a less visually impressive but more edible version. On a positive note, the chili was nice and went really well, even in the non-chocolatey stripes, so I can recommend that element unreservedly. To make the food colouring issue even worse, I made myself some blue milk to go with the cake. Blue milk is of course an iconic Star Wars beverage. I also found the cake to be very nice with thickened cream, but I was wise enough to not turn it into blue cream.