He loves sports in general, and soccer in particular, and is a big fan of the Spanish Real Madrd, C.F. soccer team, so I began looking for ideas with this in mind. I probably prerused another 100 cakes, focusing primarily on the ones that had been decorated with buttercream frosting...you can't imagine how many Real Madrid cakes have been baked in the past!
I felt I needed to keep the design fairly simple because I still felt pretty inexperienced and I wasn't sure about my capacity to create something very complex. The design I finally came up with consisted of a large round cake, which I decorated with green buttercream frosting to symbolize the soccer field, topped with a small half-dome soccer ball with the Real Madrid emblem on top. An added benefit was that I only had to buy two more icing colors, green and blue, because I already had everything else I needed for this cake.
I knew I wanted to include the emblem on the cake some-how, but I also knew it was going to be complicated to draw it. I had never worked with fondant before, so I didn't think that was a viable option either. Fortunately when I went to the store to buy the gel icing colors, I found a Real Madrid edible wafer emblem and knew I had found the solution to my problem.
Since the family likes chocolate cake the best, I stuck with the chocolate cake and buttercream frosting recipe that I had used before. I used the 28 cm (11 inch) round Springform cake tin again to make two layers for the base of the cake, and to make the spherical ball protuding from the top, I used a small Spanish clay bowl that I had lying around in the cupboard. Once the 3 separate cake layers were baked, I "built" the cake by using some of the buttercream frosting in between the two bottom layers and then a little bit more to attach the sphere on top.
Now all that was left was the decoration! The first step was to frost it with the green buttercream using the same technique I used to make the Elmo cake (see Cakes - Frost Cake Layers using a Piping Bag tutorial) which, thankfully, was easier for me and went faster this time. Then I used some of the white buttercream that I had reserved to draw the base of the soccer ball, and I printed out a soccer ball template that I used as a guide to draw the black parts of the ball with piping gel that I had tinted with black icing color. Then I had to attach the emblem. To achieve the look I wanted, I carefully cut the edges off of the wafer following the outline of the emblem and gently centered it on top of the ball. Lastly, I made several borders with blue and green buttercream and the small star tip to give the cake a more "finished" look and I piped "Feliz Cumpleaños Carlos" around the side of the cake with the left-over black piping gel.
Unfortunately, since I had no intention of creating a blog at the time, I do not have any pictures of the process, nor very many of the actual cake itself. I also have to admit that at that time, baking and decorating the cake was about all I could handle! I did not have any extra room in my head to think about taking step-by-step photos, which is what I hope to begin doing from now on. This cake was also extra-special for me as well because, like my nephew and everybody in my family, I am a HUGE Real Madrid fan! Hala Madrid!
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