My basketball cake

Today's cake is for the 35th birthday of a man who I don't know personally but I know that he is a big Lakers fan. I think that is enough to explain why his cake looks like that...

Now I'll share with you some "secrets". First, that was my first cake in the shape of a ball and being honest with you it was a big challenge. There were some friends who tried to calm me down with the words "Don't worry, if you made a rectangular or square cake, it's much easier. You will see!" And I saw :) - it wasn't so difficult but it wasn't so easy too. Probably a crucial role in that day played the humidity in the air. Everything was melting very quickly, even in my hands. 

Anyway, some words about the layers. I baked them in a ball shaped pan and that definitely helped me a lot. But only in the beginning :). Half of the ball was a purple cake and the other half-yellow. I thought it would be a nice surprise if even the cake layers correspond to the Lakers colors. Each half I separated in two and after that I stuck them with chocolate frosting in a zebra pattern (yellow-purple-yellow-purple). I covered the ball with butter cream and everything looked perfect till the moment when I had to cover the cake with the fondant...And the fondant started tearing apart! For a sec. I lost control. There was only one thought  in my mind -  I spoiled the whole cake and the birthday party. Isn't it terrible?!!!! I removed the fondant and I started from the beginning. The second time it was better but not perfect for me. The fondant easily stuck to my fingers and I had to work extremely quickly. I don't want to justify myself but that was the main reason why I couldn't make a perfect round shape...

And because I knew that the person is a big Lakers fan I printed the name of the team on an edible sheet and decorated the cake. I put also one small sticker on the scarf around the ball and the cake was ready for the big day. It was an important day because at the same day there were two parties - a birthday and a baby shower. The man with basketball cake is the father of a baby girl Rebecca who is expecting to be born in 10 days. There was another cake for the baby shower that I'll show you in my next post. Be patient :)