Football Cake

Football Cake

    • three 8-inch layers of chocolate cake

    • two 6-inch layers of yellow cake

    • 3 - 3 1/3 cups vanilla buttercream, tinted grass green

    • 1 cup vanilla buttercream, white

    • 1 1/2 cups chocolate buttercream

Assembly Steps:

    1. Level all of the cakes with a sharp knife or cake leveler, saving any scraps for another use.

    2. Place a 10-inch cake board on a lazy susan or turntable. Place the first 8-inch layer of cake on the board, bottom side up. Frost with a thin layer of the green buttercream. Repeat with the 2nd and 3rd layers.

    3. Frost the bottom tier all over with green buttercream.

    4. Follow the instructions in a previous post for securing the bottom section of the cake with dowels, followed by a 6-inch cake board to support the top tier. Be sure to poke a hole in the center of the 6-inch cake board.

    5. Place a 6-inch layer of cake on the cake board, bottom side up. Frost with a thin layer of the chocolate buttercream. Place the second 6-inch layer of cake on top. Secure the cake with a long dowel down the center of the cake, through the hole in the cake board, all the way to the bottom.

    6. Frost the top tier all over with chocolate buttercream, taking care not to mix it with the green buttercream.

    7. Fill a piping bag with the white buttercream. Fit the bag with a flat tip, Wilton #45. Pipe lines, starting at the bottom of the top tier, over the side of the bottom tier, down to the bottom edge; these lines represent the lines of a football field. I piped 11 lines, with two of them spaced wider apart than the other. (Helpful Tip: use a toothpick to lightly mark the buttercream where you're going to pipe the lines, before you start.)

    8. Since the birthday boy was turning 1, I piped "#1" in the wider section, still using the flat tip. Switch to a small round tip, Wilton #4. Pipe the numbers of the field around the bottom of the cake, next to the corresponding lines. For my cake, I piped them in this order: Goal, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, Goal, and with "Endzone" piped in the larger section.

    9. On top of the cake, I used the same small round tip to pipe the "Happy Birthday" message.

    10. Pipe six footballs around the sides of the top tier.

    11. Switch to a medium open star tip, Wilton #32. Pipe a border of stars around the edge of the top tier.

    12. Fill a piping bag with the rest of the green buttercream. Fit the bag with a grass tip, Wilton #233. Pipe grass all around the top of the bottom tier, and then at the bottom edge.

    13. Finish the cake with little plastic football players cake toppers!

Recipe and design from Curly Girl Kitchen