Football Shirt Birthday Cake
With a part time job and a young family I don't have as much time for cake decorating as I used to so I tend to rely on our local cake shop which makes amazing celebration cakes. Next month though I'm hoping to have time to make a football shirt cake for my son's birthday as they're easy to do and don't take very long to decorate.
I used to do a lot of cake decorating and football shirt cakes were always really popular. If you fancy having a go yourself then there is a simple way of making a football shirt from a square cake, see my guide below.
- Next, roll out the sugar paste until it is large enough to cover your cake. Carefully lift the sugar paste onto the cake (use your rolling pin to help) and gently smooth down all over, taking care around the sleeves of the shirt.
- Once the icing is smoothed and you're happy with it you can add details like collars, sleeve edges, stripes or logos. You can pipe details on with royal icing or use more sugar paste cut into shapes. The team badges that I used on my cakes are printed onto edible icing, my local cake decorating shop used to do this for me.
- Use a cake sponge that's quite firm and not too crumbly or the cake will be difficult to coat with buttercream once it has been cut into small shapes. A madeira sponge is good to use or you could try freezing the cake pieces before you coat them with buttercream.
- Use string to measure your cake then hold the string over the rolled out icing to see if it is big enough to cover it.
Here are a few examples of ones I have done before, the 'grass' is coloured buttercream piped onto the cake board using a Wilton grass piping tube.
Cutting the cake into sections
How to decorate the cake
- Once the cake is cut, place the pieces on the cake board in a t-shirt shape as shown above. Once you are happy with the shape, you can coat the cake in buttercream using a pallet knife to smooth it onto the surface- Next, roll out the sugar paste until it is large enough to cover your cake. Carefully lift the sugar paste onto the cake (use your rolling pin to help) and gently smooth down all over, taking care around the sleeves of the shirt.
- Once the icing is smoothed and you're happy with it you can add details like collars, sleeve edges, stripes or logos. You can pipe details on with royal icing or use more sugar paste cut into shapes. The team badges that I used on my cakes are printed onto edible icing, my local cake decorating shop used to do this for me.
Tips:
- You can also use buttercream to decorate the cake if you don't want to use sugar paste. Just colour the buttercream using food colouring paste.- Use a cake sponge that's quite firm and not too crumbly or the cake will be difficult to coat with buttercream once it has been cut into small shapes. A madeira sponge is good to use or you could try freezing the cake pieces before you coat them with buttercream.
- Use string to measure your cake then hold the string over the rolled out icing to see if it is big enough to cover it.
Here are a few examples of ones I have done before, the 'grass' is coloured buttercream piped onto the cake board using a Wilton grass piping tube.
Thank you for the tips - I have been asked to make a football shirt and this is perfect! Just one question - what sized cake tin did you use?
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you found it useful! I used an 8" square cake tin for the ones shown here, the 'Red 65' cake at the top is a 12". Any size square tin will work so it just depends on how many serving you need from the cake. Hope this helps!
DeleteYour work is very good and I appreciate you and hopping for some more informative posts. Thank you for sharing great information to us. cupcakes in little rock ar
ReplyDeleteGreat post, very helpful! How many servings did you get from this cake? I need to make a football shirt cake for about 30 children... any suggestions as to what size tin to use? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi there, an 8" square cake serves about 30 so you might be ok to do it this size, however as some of the cake is discarded when shaping the cake, maybe you could size up and do a 10" square cake which serves about 50. You would have plenty for the children and have some left over for any extra guests.
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