FORE!!

My friend's husband turned 50 this week, so she asked me to make a cake for him. Her only request was that it have a golf theme. This is what I came up with.

I had several different ideas in my head, but I couldn't seem to settle on one. I had the idea for the big golf ball, but I was also thinking about making a golf course. I decided to go with the golf ball, but then couldn't decide what to do with the rest of the cake. Should I make a sand trap? a water hazard? a hole? How should I put the name and age on it? Should I put it on the ball? on the side? on the top? Soooo many questions.

I went and bought a ball pan, made my favorite chocolate cake recipe, and got to work. This recipe is so fabulous that I was able to get the quarter sheet and the ball out of it. Todd's favorite flavor is red velvet, but Robin, Todd's wife, thought that it might look too much like Christmas with the green icing. So chocolate it was. Which was really fine with me because this chocolate cake recipe is just so yummy.

I baked, cooled, and crumb coated the cakes while watching game 6 of the World Series. This was the game that went on and on and on. But lucky for me, I had time to get all of this done ... and the Cardinals won!

Doesn't that chocolate cake look yummy? I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but I really like chocolate cake.

The ball cake was really interesting to make. With every step, it got more and more lopsided. I was able to get all of the frosting on it and smooth, but then I had to figure out how to dimple it. I looked at a lot of different things ... a pen cap, the end of my Exacto knife ... before I finally decided on a pearl earring. No really ... a pearl earring. It worked great. It was rounded just right and was the perfect size.

So then I iced the 1/4 sheet cake. I had it so smooth and looking nice that the next step was really scaring me ... putting the golf ball on the cake. In hindsight, I probably should have had a bigger cake circle under the ball. I cut it so that it was the exact size of the flat part a cut on the ball. This made it really hard to place it on the cake. I marked where I wanted the ball to go, put in the supports, and then had to have Craig help me place it on. Armed with a cake lifter and an icing spatula, we carefully lifted the ball and tried to carefully place it on the supports. The only problem was that I couldn't see what I was doing ...  and then I couldn't get my fingers out from under it. When the ball was finally resting comfortably on top of the cake, I had two hands full of white AND green frosting. CRAP!!!

So I got the white icing back out, touched up the ball, smoothed it when it crusted, and re-dimpled it. It didn't look great, but it would do.

By this time I had decided that I would make a putting green on the corner of the cake where I would do the writing. So I loaded up my piping bag with green icing and started piping in the grass. I was a little concerned that I wouldn't have enough ... mixing more color would have been disastrous. But I had enough and I thought it looked pretty good. I was also able to cover up most of my repair job on the golf ball with tall grass. :)

I really, really, really hate writing on cakes. I wish that I was more confident with it, but I'm not. I knew this part was next, and I wasn't excited about it. It didn't help that I had game 7 of the World Series on and was so distracted by it. But I loaded up a new piping bag with white icing and a #3 tip, and got ready to write. I considered putting the "50" on the ball. After all the trouble I had had with that stupid ball so far, I decided to just leave it alone. The writing on the cake isn't great, but it could have been a whole lot worse.

Overall, I think the cake turned out nice. Tomorrow morning I get to load it in my car and drive it down the road less than a mile. I will admit that I'm more than a little nervous about it. I really hope that my next blog post isn't about a cake disaster with pictures of yummy chocolate cake smashed all over the back of my car from a giant cake golf ball rolling off a cake.