Baked on February 4th, 2018
Recipe Sources:
Yo's Ultimate Chocolate Cake (Yolanda, Gampp, How to Cake it)
Yo's Famous Italian Meringue Buttercream
Hosting a Super Bowl party this year was a perfect excuse to bake a GIANT cake! Neither of the two teams I root for (Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks) were in the game, so there were no pre-game nerves to knock me off my baking game. For those who are football fans, you may be scratching your head wondering how in the world I could root for those two teams. Yes, I own a cheesehead and yes I own a Russell Wilson jersey, but I do keep them separated in my closet to avoid fighting. The Green Bay Packers are my #1 due to home state pride, but I couldn't help falling in love with the 12th man while living in Seattle. That said, some how I just couldn't bring myself to like Tom Brady when I lived in Boston ... but I digress. After doing some extensive google image searching for football themed cakes, I landed on a design for a football stadium I thought was feasible to make.
It's time to make a SUPER cake for a SUPER bowl!
This creation required:
- Two 9" x 13" chocolate sheet cakes
- Two batches of the Italian meringue buttercream
- Sprinkles
- Fondant for the letters
After baking the two chocolate cakes, I first leveled the cakes to be the same height. I then cut the first cake into two pieces: one 9" x 9" and one 4" x 9" slice. The second cake was cut into seven pieces: one 4" x 9" slice, two 2.5" x 9" slices, and four 1" x 9" slices.
To make the basic structure of the cake, I placed the two 4" x 9" slices on either side of the 9" x 9" cake. Using vanilla buttercream as the glue, I then stacked the the two 2.5" x 9" slides on either end and two 1" x 9" slices on top of that. The remaining two 1" x 9" slices were used as two side 'fences' to what would become the football field. Using a serrated knife, I carved the two towers on either end at and angle down to the top of the fence. Lastly the whole outer surface was covered in buttercream that I colored light gray to resemble concrete.
Next it was time to sod the field and fill the stadium with fans. To create the fans, I carefully patted rainbow sprinkles onto either side of the incline, trying to maintain a rectangular shape. Plastic wrap left in the middle of the cake caught many of the sprinkles that escaped the stands. When this was complete, I used a star-tipped piping bag and green buttercream to pipe on lines of grass to field. Lastly a small round piping tip was used to pipe on ten yard lines and "50" on each side of the center of the field. I'll be the first to admit that I need to work on having a more steady hand with a piping bag; the lines turned out pretty squiggly.
The last step was to make it clear this wasn't just any stadium, but the SUPER BOWL stadium. I colored some fondant yellow and used cookie cutters to cut out the letters to spell "SUPER BOWL" and "LII" on each end of the cake.
This was a super fun cake to make, and the chocolate cake recipe from How to Cake It was SOO tasty. I would definitely recommend the recipe even for more traditional cakes.