The type of cake I never thought I’d make… But then I volunteered for the smash cake for a friend’s son’s birthday before knowing the theme, so here comes a sports cake! Wasn’t sure how ‘smashable’ fondant would be, so I made an extra cupcake in buttercream only, but smashed by the little guy that big ball was!
Used Wilton’s ball pan set, with my most favorite wet towel strips wrapped around each pan, resulting in two perfectly leveled, evenly baked half-spheres! (My two previous Wilton ball pan attempts have been disastrous, as without the strips cake bakes to a crisp on the edges while the middle is still wet and mushy.)
Dr. Oetker organic chocolate cake mix with chocolate buttercream (melted Belgian chocolate with 54% cocoa content, organic unsalted butter, Ghirardelli chocolate power, a touch of powder sugar and organic heavy cream) in 8 tortes — birthday boy, I was told, was very fond of chocolate! That fairly small cake took 1lb of butter for filling and frosting…
The baseball had some unintended but very realistic texture… I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to smooth fondant over a sphere, so to prevent overstretching, cracking and tearing, I rolled the fondant (Choco-pan) on a thin piece of plastic (in retrospect, I don’t think I would have been able to do it otherwise, the shape is very tricky…). Then, I flopped the fondant, with the plastic, over the sphere and proceeded to smooth it on, still without removing the plastic. It resulted in tiny, little, uniformly shaped, very shallow indents/folds, all around the ball – just like leather! “Stitching” those baseballs was very time consuming as I rolled fondant very thin and cut it in tiny little pieces for each stitch… I’m pretty exited about how the cake ended up, considering I’ve never seen a baseball up-close and personal… Giants logo was free-handed on fondant. My Halloween serving plates ended up the perfect match!
“I don’t want that one because it has chemicals in it” – my 4 1/2 year-old precious exclaimed, rightfully refusing a bottle of flavored water! My friend shrugged to the greatly amused crowd: “His parents are vegetarian.” – and understanding nods followed… Should we be afraid of creating a monster or give ourselves a deserved pat on the back for raising such a reasonable offspring?! 🙂
May I have an extra slice, please?... 
You must be logged in to post a comment.