Los Angeles Lakers Cake

This cake was made for a friend who is 10 and a Los Angeles Lakers basketball fan.  All the decorations are hand cut with fondant and below is how it was done.

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The cake is an 8 inch round, chocolate cake filled with Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC).  You will find my recipe at the bottom of this post, 80th Birthday Cake with IMBC Recipe.  The cake is then covered in Marshmallow Fondant (MMF).  Visit my page with MMF recipes, tips and information found HERE, Marshmallow Fondant Recipes.

The logo was made using the same technique on my Boston Red Sox Cake (click HERE to see it).

The only difference is the "Los Angeles" font and the dashes around the "Lakers" was hand piped (these were just too tiny to hand cut out of fondant).  In order for the purple piping to match the other purple on the cake, I diluted the MMF with a tiny bit of hot water and mixed it up really well until it was evenly melted.  I then piped it using a #1 round piping tip and a toothpick to help move each stroke into it's proper place as I tried to copy the logo as exact as I could.

Those wonderful basketball bumps...to achieve the basketball texture I used a #5 round piping tip and punched them one by one around the entire cake.  It took an hour alone to get the texture done but the effect achieved by it was well worth it.  Doesn't it look neat?

For the black striping along the sides of the cake, I first impressed the pattern on the sides of the cake using one of those tear drop shaped flower shaping tools (don't know the name for it), used a clay extruder to extrude the black "rope", then smoothed them "into" the impression on the cake so that the stripes were more flushed to the surface rather than protruding way out.

As for the base board, I was trying to achieve the basketball court flooring.  I cut out the individual panels, scored them with the thin tool to get the wood grain, assembled them on the board, then brushed it over with clear piping gel that I diluted way down with vodka that was mixed with a teeny drop of brown gel color.  The piping gel dries glossy and helps the board resemble the shiny basketball floor quite well I think.

Visit the bottom of my post about making a Wine Bottle In a Crate Cake for the Piping Gel Recipe.

I hand cut the Laker's Jersey's (one purple jersey and one yellow jersey) and added the birthday boys age to them using the FMM Tappit Cutter Set.

Lot's of details were added and textures were added to this cake but it makes for a really cool, kids birthday cake.  Hope you like it!