Introduction: Darth Vader Pops
Star Wars is a halloween classic and these Darth Vader pops are the perfect sweet treat! They're made up of chocolate heads and pretzel + candy melt lightsabers.
The inspiration for buying the molds and making dessert projects with them came from this video!
Step 1: Ingredients & Supplies
For this instructable you will need:
- Darth Vader molds (I purchased them for $15 from Amazon, you can find them here)
- red candy melt
- chocolate chips (I prefer semi-sweet but dark would be perfect too!)
- pretzel sticks
- lollipop sticks (I used ones that are 8 inches long)
- treat bags
- ribbon
and Star Wars and Halloween graphics!
The Darth Vader molds are originally supposed to be ice trays but they work perfect for chocolates.
Step 2: Melt the Chocolate and Fill the Molds
Fill about half of a mug with chocolate chips and microwave them for about 1 minute, pausing after 30 seconds to give it a stir. Once it's melted, I always add some more chocolate chips, give it a stir, and wait for them to be completely melted.
Put a spoonful of melted chocolate into each of the molds. Then, grip both sides of the mold and lift it up and down. Shaking the mold will help to remove any air bubbles. It will also help to ensure that all of the fine details of Darth Vader's face will be filled. Add more spoonfuls of chocolate until each mold is full and shake again.
Step 3: Add the Lollipop Sticks & Cool
Place a lollipop stick onto each mold and cover with more chocolate. As you can see, this mold was not designed to hold the sticks in place. It's makes things a bit more difficult but not impossible by any means.
I used tape to hold the lollipop sticks in place and covered some of the molds with wax paper to keep them from interfering with each other.
Place the mold in the refrigerator for 45 minutes.
Step 4: Remove From Mold
Once the chocolates have hardened, you can remove them from the mold. Be careful when doing so as to not chip off any of the fine points of the design.
Step 5: Make the Pretzel Lightsabers
Melt some of the red candy melt in the microwave. Then, take a pretzel stick and roll it in a spoonful of the melted candy melt. Be sure to cover as much of the pretzel stick as you can. As you're rolling it, slowly pull it out of the candy melt. You can see that it leaves a subtle swirl pattern.
Lean the covered pretzels on a plate covered with wax paper. Let them dry then you can repeat to cover the tip that you were holding before.
Step 6: Prepare the Graphics
I absolutely love the graphics that I was able to put together for this design. I searched Google Images for 'Happy Halloween Star Wars' and found a fantastic graphic with R2D2.
To make the tags, I combined these two designs:
- Happy Halloween, click here
- 'May the Force Boo With You' by sandytoesandpopsicles.com, click here (I made sure not to crop out the credit)
For the image of Darth Vader, I modified this image: click here
I sized the images so that they can be printed on a 4x6 print. It doesn't matter that Darth Vader's head is cut off as it will be behind the chocolate one. When cutting out the image of Darth Vader, I was sure to leave a white border to frame the image.
Step 7: Assemble Darth Vader
Punch a hole at the top of Darth Vader's body and slide it onto the lollipop stick.
Step 8: Add the Pretzel Lightsabers
This was the trickiest part! I made a hole and created a loop with a small piece of wax paper to hold the pretzel stick in place. I ended up needing to have two loops to hold the pretzel at the right angle.
Step 9: Wrap and Tie W/ a Bow
Place a Darth Vader pop in a treat bag. String a 'Happy Halloween' tag on a ribbon and tie the treat bag closed.
Step 10: Happy Halloween!
After making these, I had some ideas for what I would change in doing this again:
- edit the Darth Vader image so that the lightsaber image is not as long and won't be noticeable behind the pretzel one
- create a back to the tag. Perhaps with contact information depending on what you're making these for or 'From the kitchen of' :)