A very good friend of mine asked me to make a cake for her husband's birthday. She has been incredibly supportive and encouraging of my cake adventures so I was very excited that she asked me to do this for her.
She wanted something fun, something that reflected her husband's likes and interests. We tossed around a few ideas and finally decided on a soccer ball. He loves soccer so it seemed fitting. I lucked out and was able to find a Wilton soccer ball pan at Homesense for a good price.
The soccer ball pan is basically 2 separate bowl shaped metal pans that you bake the cake in and then put together. I had never baked anything in a dome shaped pan so decided to do a trial run first. Thank god I did! The first one did NOT turn out well. Stupid me, I ran a knife around the outside of each cake once it had cooled in the pan a bit. I do this with all my other cakes so it seemed reasonable. Big mistake. Because the sides of the pan arent straight, I ended up cutting into the cake when I did that and took big chunks of cake off in the process :(.
Not letting it go to waste, I decided to try a couple different piping techniques to see what looked better.
I normally would have tried this with fondant, but she wanted icing since it tastes better (it does). Fondant would have been more of a challenge I think, trying to line up all of the hexagons and pentagons, they would have to be precise.
Overall we thought the 'lines' looked better than the stars. I'm not a huge fan of the star tip for this kind of pattern, I think it makes the cakes look a bit cheap, but that's just me!
I rebaked the cake the next day and it came out perfect. I just made sure the pans were greased and floured thoroughly and they came out easily. Once the cakes were cooled, I levelled them off and cut a bit off of one of the domes to make a flat base for the cake to rest on. I iced the middle of the cake and put the halves together. Once they were set, I put a plastic dowel through the whole cake to keep the top from sliding off. I should have taken pictures of the assembly process, oh well, next time!
The soccer ball pan came with templates for the hexagons and pentagons which i cut out and laminated. I then placed them on the cake and traced around them with royal icing. Once that was done I filled them in with the white and black icing.
I used the same grass technique on the cake board as I did for my garden themed cake earlier. In hindsight, I think it looks a bit plain. I should have added tufts of grass in areas or right under the soccer ball.
What I learned:
- how to make a sphere shaped cake
- how to make a banner out of fondant
- try this cake again with fondant to compare
- add more grass - either fondant or icing with the grass tip
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