Sports Ball Cake

This Sports Ball Cake combines the biggies - Football, Baseball, Basketball, and Soccer.  Humm I guess I should have included a volleyball-forgot about that one.

The cakes are an 8" at the bottom, and 6" in the middle, and a 4" sphere on the top.

To make the curved marks on the baseball tier, I used a bowl that was the same height as my cake.  The marks are a guide to where the red stitch marks are going to be placed.

I then piped a thin line of brown icing into the marks and along the top and bottom edge of the cake.  This will form the seam below the red stitching.  It is okay to be sloppy with the piping.  I also tried to spray some brown petal dust along the seam to give it a "dirty" look.  I put the petal dust in a spray bottle but it didn't work like I wanted.  It ended up a little splotchy. 

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Next I used a JEM #2 strip cutter to cut some Wilton Red fondant strips and then cut them about 1" long.  

I folded the 1" strip into a 90 degree angle and placed them along the seam line.  Notice the texture on the white cake below?  I always use a Viva paper towel to smooth the sides of my cake.  Normally  I use the smooth side of the paper towel, but this time I used the rough side to give the surface of the cake more texture.

For the football tier I used a Bounty paper towel to give it an even rougher texture than the baseball cake.

I made a cutter for the center section (sorry I don't know what it is called) using my 3D printer and the pattern below.  But if you don't have a 3D printer you can just use a paper template.  I used Wilton Brown, Black, and White fondant.  I again used the JEM #2 strip cutter to make the boarder around the base of the football cake.   For the white stitching I used the JEM #3 strip cutter.  You can cut the strips by hand rather than using the strip cutter, but I like the ease and precision of the strip cutter.

The basketball cake at the top was the hardest part of the entire cake.  I used two Fat Daddio 4" hemisphere pans to bake the cake.  

And then I frosted it in orange buttercream.  

I used a damp finger to smooth out the frosting, but to me it still looked a little messy.  And I used my trusty JEM #2 strip cutter to make the black lines on the basketball.

When the cake was finished I thought the sides of the baseball tier looked a little plain, so I added some "All Star" fondant lettering in red and blue.

Here is the pattern:

For the little sports balls I used a plastic mold and just pressed the fondant into the mold.  After removing the fondant, I just drew the black accent lines on the soccer and basketball with an edible black marker.  I used a marker with a wide tip to get the bold, black lines.  On the baseball I used a red marker, and the little football has white fondant accents.

So here is the finished cake.

And I made a few matching cookies too.

Happy Decorating,

Carol