New England Sports Themed Cake

This Sports Themed Cake is for you die hard New England sports fans! Whether it’s the Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox or Bruins, this cake celebrates all four teams!

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If you’ve grown up in New England over the past 20 years and you’re a sports fan you’ve been pretty lucky! All four of our New England teams have had a lot of success. Especially the Patriots!  Let’s face it, watching professional sports is much more fun when your team wins!

Paul and I often say how lucky our kids are to be growing up during this time in New England sports. They don’t know the pain and suffering that went on for 86 years waiting for the Red Sox to break the curse! Or how bleak it was to be a Patriots fan before 2002.

So when I received a call from my friend asking me to make this Sports Themed Cake for her son’s 16th birthday I was all in! He is a huge New England sports fan so she knew she wanted to incorporate all four teams. We searched the internet to get some inspiration and this is what we came up with!

Today I’m going to take you through how this Sports Themed Cake was made. I’ll share some of the products and colors that were used as well as techniques.

First of all, the order the cakes were placed in was very deliberate. I knew that I wanted the Patriots to be on top with the Lombardi Trophy as a cake topper. Then I thought that the Red Sox would look best placed just below the Patriots since they have similar team colors. The Bruins came next and the Celtics was the base. Having the Celtics at the bottom made it easy for me to decide what to cover the cake board with. It obviously needed to be the classic Parkay floor that the Celtics play on.

For my Sports Themed Cake to be perfect it needed a perfect place to rest. If I’m using a cake board to place my cake on I always cover it with fondant.  When spending hours on a custom cake like this it only makes sense that the cake stand looks just as good. It’s quite easy to do and finishes the whole cake off nicely.

I start by covering the cake board with shortening. Then I roll out my fondant, place it on top of the cake board and smooth it with a fondant smoother. Finally, I trim the excess fondant around the edge with a pallet knife. This should be made a few days before you’re going to use it so it has time to dry out and harden. I also always use a ribbon to trim the edge. You can either glue it or use double sided tape to adhere it.

To give this cake board a hard wood floor effect I used a ruler as a guide and one of my fondant tools to make the lines for the flooring. The fondant I used was Wilton White that I tinted a pale yellow with Wilton buttercup food gel color. After the lines were finished I used my fondant tool to add some wood grain as well. To finish it off I mixed a little bit of Wilton brown food gel color with vodka and brushed it onto the fondant in some places. You don’t want to cover the whole board just here and there to give it depth.

The Celtic cake was actually not cake at all. She didn’t need to feed an army so I made a dummy cake. It was made from a styrofoam cake block that I covered with shortening and then the Wilton Green fondant. A similar technique to the way I cover the cake board.

To make the Celtic logo I used Wilton black, green and white fondant. I used an assortment of different sized circle cutters to make different sized circles on all the logos. The Celtics logo started with a black circle, then a smaller white circle placed on top of the black. Then I use a small shaped heart cutter to make the green shamrock. I just pushed the top of the heart down to cut through the fondant then I used an xacto knife to trace the rest out. The celtic lettering is written out with royal icing that I tinted green with Wilton Kelly Green food gel color.

The basketballs were made with white fondant that I tinted orange using a mixture of orange and brown Wilton food gel color. Then I piped them with royal icing tinted black with Wilton black food gel.

The Bruins logo has white and black fondant as well as white fondant tinted yellow. I used Wilton golden yellow food gel to tint it. To create the “B” I printed the logo on paper off of my computer, cut out the “B” and used it on top of my rolled out fondant to trace around with my xacto knife. I traced a larger yellow “B” and then traced a black “B” to place on top of it that was slightly smaller. This technique works best if you roll your fondant out and let it sit for a bit to slightly dry out. That way the fondant doesn’t pull as much as you cut it.

The Red Sox cake and logo has white and red Wilton fondant. The blue fondant is Wilton blue fondant mixed with some black fondant to deepen the color a bit. The Wilton blue was a bit too bright.  I printed the logo out so I would have something to look at while I worked. I just traced out the sox with my xacto knife, free hand. The writing is piped on with royal icing tinted with Wilton “no taste” red food gel.

The Patriots cake has Wilton blue fondant mixed with black to deepen the color and Wilton red and white. The grey fondant was made by mixing white fondant with a small amount of black fondant. I printed out the Pats logo, cut it out and used it to trace on my fondant.

Finally, for the Lombardi Trophy. I used gumpaste and just modeled the pieces by hand. I tinted the gumpaste with a small amount of the Wilton black food gel and kelly green. A 12 inch bamboo dowel was used to connect the base with the football as well as sink into the cake to hold  it in place. Brush the dowel with a bit of water mixed with either a small piece of fondant or gumpaste to make a glue. Then sink the dowel all the way through your base. Leave enough poking out of the top to adhere the football. I sink the other end into a styrofoam cake base to support the sculpture while it dries out.

You’ll want to make your trophy at least a couple days before or it can also be made weeks in advance. I was planning to airbrush the trophy with silver airbrush food coloring but ended up just using a clean artists paint brush to brush it on. It gave the trophy that metallic look.

 

A Sports Themed Cake for the New England Sports fan in your life!

So that’s it. If you know someone who would love a New England Sports Themed Cake share this post with them.

If you enjoy making specialty cakes and have any other questions about how I made this cake just leave them below.

Here are some more of the specialty cakes that I’ve made. Just click on the picture to see the post.