Hi,
I have never done cake decorating, but I'm a sports fan and received a stadium bundt cake pan as a gift. Do any of you have any suggestions for a novice cake decorator for ways to decorate this cake? Is there somewhere that I can buy or print a football field image that would be suitable to use under the cake? I saw some plastic place mats around Superbowl time last year, but they were too big. How about goalpost - should I make those out of something, or would I find something like that at a craft store like Michaels?
Also, are there any cake recipes that work better in this type of pan & don't crumble when you take it out of the pan?
Thanks for any advice. I'd like to try to make this cake sometime this football season.

Use a dense cake for the bundt cake. Look for recipes that say "pound cake", "cream cheese", or contain 4 eggs.

Also, since there's so much detail in the stadium bundt, I wouldn't frost the cake -- can you find a recipe that stands alone? Or, you can have whipped cream or a flavored syrup on the side. So the cake looks pretty and you can see the detail, but people add their own "topping" after they slice a piece.

Yes, you can purchase edible images. There are some cake decorating supplies stores online, and you might be able find a store in your town. They have some images for purchase, but many let you bring your own image, and they will print it on edible paper with edible ink for you.

I think the goal posts idea is great! I'm not sure how to make them. you might be able to find some pre-made ones at a cake decorating store (or even Michaels or JoAnns...).

Thanks for the suggestions. I was thinking a lemon cake would be good, maybe with a thin glaze that wouldn't really hide the detail instead of frosting.
Can I get away with using a boxed cake mix (or a doctored one), or would that not be enough batter?

I'm going to revive this old topic because I'm still looking for ideas to decorate a stadium cake for a football party. I'm also wondering if a standard Betty Crocker cake mix would be adequate (maybe Lemon or just Yellow), or if I need to doctor a mix to be dense enough. I have a bunch of boxes of BC cake mix, so I'd like to be able to use that rather than buying something new. The pan is the Nordicware Stadium pan.
I just had one inspiration to use a green fruit roll-up under the cake as the field, and then I could just 'draw' yard lines with white icing, but I still don't know what to do for goal posts, players, etc. I also wonder if the cake will be too plain without frosting, so if I should doctor the mix to make it more interesting. I'm also considering the suggestion to have whipped cream or other toppings on the side for after we've cut up the stadium.

Whenever I need a denser cake and plenty of batter, I add a pound cake mix plus ingredients to a regular mix. I'm not remembering how much detail is on your pan, but I'm thinking a thin glaze would be the way to go, adn then perhaps you could take your fruit roll-up idea a step farther. You could scatter small amounts of detail, little punches of color, maybe make some pendants. You could use bendy straws for goalposts, if you don't care if they're edible or not. I'll have to go find a pic of this pan, see if I can come up with any other ideas.

Jen

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Man cannot live on bread alone. That's why someone invented CAKE!!

I looked at the Nordicwear web site. It says that the pan holds 9 cups - no idea how that compares with other pans.

For the goalposts, how about breaking dry spaghetti into the correct size and then cover them with frosting. If you have the smaller diameter pasta, you can push them into a round decorating tip to cover. Then stick them together with a dab of frosting.

As for players, I think places that sell Wilton products should have them. Or, maybe your local grocery store has them for their personalized cake and might sell them to you.

Gert

Thanks for all of your ideas. I ended up using some store bought pound cake to fill in the opening for the field, then iced it with cookie icing (which hardens somewhat.) I used a Betty Crocker recipe for an Orange Castle Bundt cake, but made it with Lemon cake mix and lemon zest instead of the orange. I thought I'd share a couple pictures of my finished product:


[url]http://img255.imageshack.us/i/img3696.jpg/
[/url]http://img339.imageshack.us/i/img3684i.jpg/

<a target='_blank' href='http://img339.imageshack.us/i/img3684i.jpg/'><img src='http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3214/img3684i.th.jpg' border='0'/></a>
<a target='_blank' href='http://img255.imageshack.us/i/img3696.jpg/'><img src='http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8875/img3696.th.jpg' border='0'/></a>

Nice job !

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~T. Martin

Very good, and thanks for posting the pix!

Jen

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Man cannot live on bread alone. That's why someone invented CAKE!!

looks great!

how did you make those flags? were they edible or were they toothpicks with paper attached?
I was watching Ace of Cakes and I saw them do something interesting to decorate a stadium. They spread piping gel over the seats and sprinkled it with those colored nonpariels sprinkles to look like people.

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When life gives you lemons, make grape juice. Then sit back and watch the whole world wonder how you did it.

The flags were not edible, it was just colored toothpicks and heavy paper.