Baseball Wedding

I am a sole proprietor,... but sometimes it take a village to bring a concept to fruition and this was one of those cakes. 

My client is the professional photographer for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Dave was getting married to Jackie.  When they came in for a consult, Dave was giving me elements of the reception and said he had a man making baseball roses.  This gentlemen removes the cover of the ball and cuts the leather into petals to make roses.  Jackie wanted the cake to be an aqua blue/turquoise color with white filagree.  I took a few days and drew up a sketch of the cake I had in mind.  Dave loved the drawing, so I gave him a copy and I started planning.

First I ordered six 20" ball bats.  I only needed four, but just incase I cut wrong,  two extra where ordered.

First my husband cut the bats above the blue band.  He also cut the cake boards needed from 1/4" sheet of plywood.  The bats are the "legs" or separators of the cake stand, the cake plates were the "boards".
The bats then needed to be drilling 1-1/4" into the center so that I could use a dowel to hold the bat and board together.  This task was an issue as the drill press we have was not high enough to get the bats under the bit.   I took the bats to Scott, the owner of a tool and die shop, and had them drilled.

       

Everything came together nicely.  The "boards" were then covered with a small baseball print material and then a plastic doily was cut to cover the material so that the frosting would not touch the material.

The Baseball Roses were the next step in this cake.  As I needed these roses to be a larger size than normal, I used a 1/4" styrofoam egg as the center.  I also used a large rose gumpaste petal cutter.

I found this wonderful tool at a local craft store.  It is for marking clay.  The kit contained a tool handle and three impression wheels.

Sugar flowers take many hours to create and this tool was a true time saver.  I took a small piece of craft foam and painted it with the red gel color, rolled the wheel through the color and then onto the gumpaste petal.

The centers were dried for a few days so that the large additional petals would be well supported when the rest of the flower was constructed.

I was so pleased with the final flowers.

A week or so before the wedding, Dave requested an additional sheet cake.  He wanted to feature a hand carved statue of Felix the Cat.  Dave also wanted the cake to be decorated like a quilt, as the bride  has a shop that does alternation and quilting.  A few days later Dave again contacts me and inquired as to whether or not it was possible for the sheet cake to have a lace train.  LACE..... oh that is definitely possible I said and with that I was ready to put all these element together for the final presentation.

The wedding cake was 16", 10" and 7" all Almond cake with Raspberry compote.  It was decorated in teal buttercream and pipped with with a white buttercream filagree using a No. 3 round tip.  

Look closely at the middle tier.  Dave brought three little statues of the Pittsburgh Pirates Mascot.

The Home plate was made of fondant and painted with the couples names

The very top of the cake featured a "Baseball" which was baked in the half ball muffin pan.  The ball was filled and then coated with a white whipped chocolate and then fondant.  The ball stitches where hand painted as they needed to be larger than my new tool would print.

I always make additional sugar flowers as I sometimes break them in the final process.  In this case, I used the extra to add to the tablescape.  

The lace is Sugarveil and I also added a train to the "bride" of the statue.   This sheet cake was half white cake with white chocolate mousse and half chocolate cake with chocolate mousse.  Too Cute!!