Wyatt's Birthday

Wyatt is a big fan of two things: Soccer and Germany.

First thought: make a soccer ball cake.

Sound cliche? Well, Wyatt is the type where a soccer ball cake is the most fitting cake. He is one of the ultimate soccer fans. So what would make this soccer ball different? It would be the Jabulani ball, which is used in the World Cup. Here's the 2010 version:

So what about the German part... skip it? No, make a German Chocolate Cake! Unfortunately, I couldn't use the traditional ingredients AND make the cake look like the Jabulani ball. So I skipped the fancy coconut, caramel and pecan nonsense and opted for the plain ol' box from the grocery store.

For the icing, I chose cream cheese icing. I'm not sure why. It seemed right at the time. I also needed to make sure it was white for the ball's appearance.

Anyway, to assemble the ball, I used the same assembly as Sig's cake. Just bake the two layers, stack them (with an icing filling between), and start to carve. It works well to use a large knife and cut the sharp cylinder-like edges on the top layer off. Ice away!

With a white hemisphere cake finished, it's time to start decorating! For the dark stripes, I used chocolate sprinkles/jimmies. I would normally use food coloring, but it was $3 a bottle per color, so I opted for a cheaper fix. For the yellow stripe, again trying to be cheap, yet creative, I sorted through the bulk candy at Wegmans. I found a bin of Mike and Ikes and picked out all yellow ones.

It works best to construct stencils if you use sprinkles. The yellow Mike and Ikes were easy to place on after the sprinkles. The last touch was the Adidas logo. I cut this out of paper to make a stencil and filled the holes with sprinkles. That's about it! These steps take a bit of patience and slow work. But they are definitely worth the results.

And Wyatt showed up wearing a Germany jacket. Perfect.