R2-A6 in Da House!

In honor of, as he put it to his family, the husband's finally making money off Star Wars rather than spending money on it with the publication of his article on StarWars.com, I whipped up an R2 unit.

No, no, Gentle Reader, I didn't miraculously obtain a robotics engineering degree and put together an astromech droid, Martha Stewart-style, from parts I found lying around the house. Instead, I got help from Betty Crapper, a chick with a Blue Bonnet and Wilton.

No, Wilton. Not Wilson.

I had a box of carrot cake mix in the pantry and thought I'd put it to use in honor of the husband's accomplishment. After just over two hours of buttercream frosting fun, I had me an astromech droid.

"But why R2-A6?" you ask, Gentle Reader? Two reasons, I reply. For starters, I've made...five R2-D2s, if you include the botched and practice ones, and I just wasn't keen on doing another Artoo. Additionally, do you know how many astromech droids there are in the Star Wars universe? Okay, neither do I, but I do know the husband has probably a dozen different ones on the shelves in the Star Wars room. (Granted, he has that many Artoo toys as well, and these not-Artoo toys are mostly repaints of the Artoo mold, but I digress.) They come in a variety of colors--hell, you could even get a pink one that was made in honor of a little girl and Artoo lover who died of cancer. Wouldn't you like to see Vader in his massive black cape and his asthmatic breathing with a pink robot rolling on his heels? Destroys his cred as a badass, yes, but it'd be damn hilarious!

Anywho, I picked R2-A6 because I was in the mood to use green. I almost used a bag of green royal icing that had come with the gingerbread holiday tree kit we bought last year, but I didn't want to ruin the cake by putting that nasty shit on top. With the boy's keen sense of what exact color I needed to make my cakey astromech exactly right goad--guiding me, as well as a pressing deadline (for I wanted the thing done before the husband arrived home from work), I think I did a pretty fair job of recreating R2-A6 in cake form.

Of course, what matters most of all is that the husband was genuinely surprised and thrilled with the cake. That the cake itself was pretty damn tasty was an added bonus.

All I got for being published on StarWars.com was this lousy cake--and a paycheck from Uncle George!