Another Lesson in Structure: Football Stadium Cake

I actually got the idea for this cake from an Ace of Cakes episode in which they make a stadium. My brother-in-law happened to be having a Seattle Seahawks themed birthday party, so it was the perfect opportunity to try it. The only problem was that the guest list was small, so I had to scale down the size of the cake in order to reduce waste. What I forgot was that smaller means narrower and more unstable! Originally, I had planned to make an entire football field with half of the stadium. Well, plans can and do change...

For the football field, I baked a 13x9 cake. For the stadium walls, I baked another 13x9 cake, sliced it lengthwise into strips to build the seats, stacking 3 layers high with a wider base at the bottom and moving in narrower. The top was only about 2 inches or less. As I was stacking, the walls kept tilting outwards, which I tried to correct by shoving multiple dowels into the cake. The walls were still tilted out, but they were somewhat more stable. Fortunately, there was not much carving to do, except for rounding the corners and bleacher levels. A quick dirty icing later, and I put it into the refrigerator with hopes that the hardened icing would help it to stay together.

For this cake I used the homemade fondant recipe again. It isn't as nice as the pre-mixed fondant because this recipe tends to be greasy yet cracks. It was a lot cheaper though. I decided to color the fondant gray for the walls, green for the field, and make little people for the bleachers. Finally, it was time to cover the cake in fondant. The sheer weight of the fondant about made the walls of the stadium collapse. I smoothed the fondant backwards--backside, upwards, over and down. If I had not had done it that way, the walls would have fallen over! As it was, I still had to add a few more dowels for support and say a prayer that the cake would not break until after my brother-in-law cut it. I laid a green field and later piped white decorator icing on for the yard lines and numbers. For the goal posts, I covered straws with fondant after taping them together into the shape of a goal post. I piped and rolled fondant details for the stadium--arches, windows, and stairs. I used fondant to shape little people to fill the stadium. My favorite part was placing the candles on the top--"Oh, No the big 30" candles were placed across the top of the stadium.

I learned a few things about scale with this cake. My goal posts and foot ball were too big because I had made them in advance. My field was too small because I had changed plans and shrunk the cake from a half sheet down to a quarter sheet. And my people were way too big because it was really difficult to make them small. This cake was certainly a learning experience! In the end it still looked cute but a bit more cartoon-like than I had intended.