California bakery’s Han Solo bread sculpture is a star attraction in Orlando
The cookie cutter Han Solo on a bakery baguette is a popular tourist attraction in Downtown Orlando. (Walt Disney World Studios, via Orlando Sentinel)
HAPPY Bday, dear Mandy!
This was my Mandy’s favorite cookie! (See below)
Happy Birthday, happy cake!
I’m so very, very sorry that the day doesn’t officially start until 9 o’clock. It’s my fault that I didn’t realize you had cake for breakfast. I’m so very, very sorry—and also that your sweet tooth is so insatiable that you didn’t stop eating when you saw us in the kitchen.
There, you have it—it is my fault.
I’m sorry too, but I’m happy to announce that our favorite cookie is off the menu. Han Solo is a cookie I’ve always liked. It is also a cookie that I always thought would make a great Disney dessert. My cousin in Washington even made a cake out of it in the 1980s for my birthday. My kids love it too!
But Han Solo was never part of the Disney wedding cake for the princess and the prince. (They were married in the Castle Plaza on April 7, 1980, in honor of Han Solo’s 30th birthday.) The original Han Solo cake came from a bakery in Chicago. (I’ve been trying to find it since I first mentioned it in a column in the Orlando Sentinel in 1987.)
It was only when I was working as a reporter at the Sentinel that my friend and longtime editor-in-chief, Frank J. Salas Jr., and I decided to bring Han Solo to life in the Orlando Sentinel’s annual Fourth of July issue. Our story won an award of excellence.
I had thought about using the Han Solo cookie as the subject of the Sentinel’s “cookie of the year” issue, but we never submitted it—and it was never published.
The one we did print was our story “A New Cookie of the Year,” a story about the Orlando Sentinel’s “cookie of the year,” Han Solo: the original cookie baker.
This