I Heart Basketball!

I really do. You probably haven't noticed that I'm a huge basketball fan, and that I can cheer EXTREMELY loud for such a small person. I'm told my neighbors can hear me quite loudly when I'm watching a Laker game at home. :)

So far this has got to be one of my favorite cake requests EVER. A basketball cake for a fan, not just any fan but I'm sure a hardcore Laker fan such as myself.

For the cake, I used the "Sports Ball Pan" from Wilton. Here are my tips (for anyone who is interested in tackling a project like this) :

• Grease the pan with shortening (not butter, really such a difference!) and dust the pan with flour generously.
• The directions that come with the pan say that it will take about 40 minutes, which is completely false in my case. I might have a really crappy old oven from the 1990's, but it took me about twice as long. So when baking this cake check your time at 45 minutes (then continue to check at increments of 10 minutes). Total time it spent in oven? 1 hour and 30 minutes!
• Wait at least 10 minutes before removing cake from pan. It should slide out like butter if you grease and flour it well.

The cake I made was chocolate (with just a hint of coffee) and lovely vanilla buttercream, that was excellent for piping! You can get the recipe by clicking here. 

I debated using black licorice, black sparkly glitter gel, and black butter cream frosting. 

The winner? Black Licorice. I know it probably doesn't taste as good as those yummy Red Vines, but it makes a deep, edgier, clean-cut black line for a basketball. So what I did was cut strips of black licorice and lined them like a basketball.

Frosting Color? I used Wilton Orange, and a hint of Copper and Brown.

I also created a scoreboard of his birthday, and for the time I used the couple's anniversary date! How cute :) 

As always thanks for reading! Hope you all enjoy your weekend and we have another Laker game tomorrow night! Woot woot!