sarlacc pit cake for my valentine

If you’re a regular reader of This Tasty Life than you should have already guessed that Jake would be getting something geeky for Valentine’s Day this year. I felt I had to stick with cake this year since last year’s Star Wars Trash Compactor cake was such a hit. This year I went with another Star Wars themed cake and created a Sarlacc Pit cake! I used a bundt cake as my base for creating the “pit”.

But first… I’m going to recap my Valentine’s Day weekend. Because I can.

Our Valentine’s weekend started on Friday evening. Jake didn’t tell me what we were up to and I had to close my eyes a few times before we got to our destination. 

We ended up heading over to Coronado to watch a pretty spectacular sunset – our first of 2016!

Since it’s wintertime, you can actually watch the sunset from Coronado. In the summer the sun sets too far to the right. If you want to catch a Coronado sunset go in the wintertime!

Jake also made a pit stop along the way for dinner. He got us a BBQ plate to share from L&L BBQ. Our very first date took place at L&L BBQ so it holds a special place in our hearts. After dinner and sunset, we headed home and got ready for Part Two of our date!

Again… I had no idea what we were doing but I was excited for whatever it was Jake had planned for us!

He ended up taking me to the Ken Cinema in Kensington to watch the short animated Oscar films – how fun! We never thought to watch the short films before so it was a lot of fun finally being able to see the nominated short films. At the Ken, you can see the animated and non-animated short films (different time slots for each). It’s just $10 to see the films. If you’ve seen the nominated Oscar short films I’ll tell you that my favorite one was “Bear Story”. I hope it wins!

I ended up finishing Jake’s Valentine’s cake while he took a nap the following day. We had gone for a nice long walk in San Clemente Park (the canyon that’s off the 52 freeway) with Maya and he was beat! Instead of napping, I finished his Valentine cake.

The Sarlacc Pit cake is a caramel bundt cake. I made it from scratch using coconut oil, sour cream, brown sugar and buttermilk (plus you know, other stuff) to make a moist cake.

The bundt cake is a good choice since it already has a hole in the middle for the pit where the Sarlacc creature lived. I used almond slivers to serve as the “teeth” of the pit where the poor folks who fall in get digested over 1,000 years. The “sarlacc” creature in the middle is a dulce de leche Milano cookie. I draped the cake in homemade caramel sauce and then crushed the Milano cookies to create the “sand” that was put all over the cake “pit”.

Raaaawwwwwrrrrrr.

In case you’re not nerdy like me and don’t know what the Sarlacc Pit is, here’s a little clip from Return of the Jedi from YouTube that shows the scene featuring the Sarlacc Pit:

Badass!

Jake always gets my my favorite flowers for Valentine’s Day… awww. We gave each other Funko Pop! figures because we’re nerds. He gave me the one I’ve been waiting for a long time which is the K-9 from Doctor Who! I gave him some baseball pops as well as this cool set of rings:

They were a set of “Player 1” and “Player 2” rings.  

The back of the rings have an old school controller printed on the back! I bought the rings from an Etsy shop called “fromtheinternet”. They had a lot of great couples rings like “Link & Zelda”, “Batman & Robin”, “Doctor & Companion”, and tons more. It was hard to pick out which set I wanted but in the end I thought the “Player 1/2” set was a good reflection on our love of gaming.

I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine’s Day!