Basketball "Cake"

July is also a busy time because there are not one, not two, but THREE birthdays in my husband's family. Here is birthday #2, the "cake" I made for my ten-year-old brother-in-law(look at all those hyphens!).

"Cake": The original request for his birthday cake was to have strawberry shortcake. I worked it out with his mom, or so we thought, to have her get a strawberry shortcake ready and I would make a "rice crispy" cake. Basketball is is favorite sport, so a giant basketball of Rice Krispy Treats is what he got! I created a double batch of the krispies and formed it into a ball, which I then refridgerated to help it get firm. (Unfortunately I made it with real butter. "What? But real butter is the best," you say! Yes, it is the best if you want to make a flat pan of treats. Margarine is what I should have used. Margarine makes the treats harden much more firmly. I learned that little lesson multiple times over the years. I wish I would have remembered it when making this basketball. By the time we got around to eating it, it looked like a half-deflated basketball instead of a perky round one!)

Frosting: I covered the rice crispy ball with a thin layer of buttercream. Then I mixed up some marshmallow fondant and dyed it using brown and orange coloring until the shade was what I wanted. It took some work to roll the fondant out nicely, but I was quite pleased with the result. It was only my second attempt at a fondant cake and I was rather pleased with the result.

Decoration: This was the most challenging part of the whole thing. After a lot of research online, I had a few different options for how I could make the pattern of a basketball on the fondant. First, I bought a sheet of basketball texturized scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby. I laid this on top of the fondant and used a rolling pin to impress the pattern. The pattern looked alright once imprinted, but it sure made it impossible for me to pull the fondant up off the table because I had to roll hard to get the pattern to stick. Thus, first attempt failed. Attempt number two was to use one of those small, hand-held cheese graters and roll it over the top of the already placed fondant. This method worked like a charm and was a super fast way to imprint the texture onto the basketball. I finished it off by cutting lines of sugar paper to go around the ball and piping the words onto it. It was near midnight by the time I got to this point and my artistic skills were failing. I made the mistake of not measuring out the letters and centering them before piping them on. Although I will say I was pleased with the little NBA logo, as well as the awesome Jimmer Fredette autograph I put on the bottom (a brilliant idea by my sister-in-law!). 

The final result was delicious. I may have liked it even more than anyone else who tried some. . . so I at least one person appreciated the minimum of six hours of work I put into it!

BONUS STORY:

Now here is the unfortunate part, apparently there was miscommunication, and my mother-in-law hadn't gotten the message that my cake wasn't a "cake" but a "treat". Thus, when we arrived, there was no strawberry shortcake to fulfill the birthday boy's request. My mother-in-law and I just looked at each other and said, "oh well, this'll do!" The candle stuck into the fondant well enough, and everyone seemed content with one dessert. And while the birthday boy seemed pleased with the basketball, his quiet request of his mom later that evening made us both roll our eyes, "Mom, can I still have some strawberry shortcake?"