The Sport Of Choice

Monday at work: "Can you make me a soccer ball cake for me this weekend?" "SURE!" I said. ...I knew I could figure it out, but I'd never done one before. After a few minutes on YouTube and a bit of a 'Soccer Ball Cake' image search, I realized there were a lot of bad soccer ball cakes out there... I'd like to think that this won't  be one of them!

It really wasn't too difficult but the precise geometric pattern did concern me, slightly. All in all though, it's a round cake... no tiers. Sounds harmless enough. I did invest in a Wilton Soccer Ball cake pan. I used it to make sure the cake I made was perfectly round, but I also used it as a guide for shapes on the ball. That was a good short cut and pretty handy.

Layering one thin base layer of white fondant over my frosted cake soccer ball to start, I then cut and placed (without adhering) the various white and black pieces overtop. Once I knew everything fit, I just dabbed a little water on the back of each shape to stick it to the existing fondant base and viola! A little bit of stitching and a little bit of fondant grass... SOCCER BALL = DONE.

I layered the fondant this way so that if, for any reason my seams did not meet between shapes, I had a white, clean base underneath to make it less apparent. I also wanted the surface texture of my soccer ball to mirror the texture of a real, stitched soccer ball as closely as possible. This meant building it in a similar manner to a real one. The black pentagons aren't on top of the white, they are on the same plane. The shapes are seam to seam.

I did steam the cake as well, before placing it on the cake base. This gave it a high gloss finish that new soccer balls have. I steamed the soccer ball before placing it on the base so as to not steam and add a gloss texture to the grass. That just wouldn't make sense. - To be a total cake geek for a minute - I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to steam a cake and test that out so I was pretty pleased about this whole opportunity. (Geek moment over.)

Pretty happy with the way it turned out. Didn't hurt that the sun was shining and my Spotify radio was playing the perfect songs all day either. 

Enjoy! Happy Birthday Alek!