Soccer-themed cake & cake pops

With the 2014 FIFA World Cup still fresh on their brains, my ex-colleague's sons requested for a soccer ball cake, specifically with Thomas Müller's jersey on it, plus soccer ball cake pops! They were going to have a soccer-themed combined birthday party, since their birthdays were only a couple weeks apart.  I was quite excited to make this cake. I had previously only made buttercream-decorated soccer ball cakes which didn't have that nice smooth fondant finish. 

But first, the cake pops! After baking and crumbling a couple batches of devil's chocolate cake, I mixed in a couple tablespoons of vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and rolled out 50 cake balls. Do check out my Cake Pop Basics page if you are interested in the how-to's of making basic cake pops. 

Instead of lollipop sticks, I decided to use straws for these cake pops, only because I thought they would look nice with black sticks instead of white ones. Unfortunately, I bought "Slurpee" straws so they had that weird spoon at the end of them, which I had to cut off for the purposes of these cake pops. 

And now, for the troublesome part: making the pentagons. Life would have been so much easier if I had a pentagon cutter. The irony of it is that I saw these pentagon cutters at the baking supply store a couple weeks ago and I thought to myself that I don't need to buy them cuz I'd never have to use them. Well, way to kick myself in the face really. I had to cut each and every single one of these fondant pentagons out using a sharp knife. That's 7 pentagons per cake pop x 50 cake pops = 350 pentagons. Geez. I did get smart after a while and figured a faster way to make pentagons: use a star cutter and cut the "arms" off, but still!! It was a LOT of cutting. I used a little bit of melted chocolate to stick the pentagons onto the chocolate covered cake balls, and boom, we've got ourselves soccer cake pops!

Each cake pop was wrapped in cellophane with a Thank you note attached to them since they were going to be used as giveaways for the party. The birthday kids' names and ages are on the jerseys for a cute little personalized touch.

soccer cake balls, packed and ready to go

And now, time for the soccer ball cake! The cake is made out of the same devil's chocolate cake as the cake pops, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache and frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. The "grass" layer is the same buttercream with Kelly Green gel food colouring added to it. 

fondant German team 2014 World Cup jersey

The birthday kids had requested for a Thomas Müller jersey to go on the cake. I decided to make jerseys for each of the boys too, with their ages as the numbers for the jerseys, in the same style as the German World Cup team as Müller's jersey. The numbers and letters were all hand-cut out of fondant, without the help of cutters.

After letting the fondant jerseys dry hard in air-conditioning, I was able to stand them up (using drinking glasses for support). Numbered candles completed the look. I'm not sure when Müller's birthday is, but it does seem like it's his birthday too right?

Soccer-themed birthday cake

cake all packed and ready for transport

Getting the cake to the party is always very challenging. The stress of the crazy drivers on the road, coupled with the momentum that the cake is subjected to as one exits the expressway too quickly, has to make a U-turn, or has to brake suddenly, is sometimes too much to bear. My advice is to always get the cake delivered to the party, instead of self-collection. That way, the baker can reassemble and fix the cake, if need be, since mishaps can happen during transportation. 

Rest assured, the soccer cake was properly reassembled and touched up after delivery, just in time for the party :)

Happy Birthday, Ean & Eon! (& Thomas Müller too?!)