Birthday "Guy" Cake

by Brenda
(Lucedale, MS USA)

My husband just had his 62nd birthday and requested an Italian Cream Cake....not exactly the kind of cake to decorate; but I gave it a try. My husband was an All-American in his day and I came up with the idea of making part of a football field as the decoration for his birthday on Labor Day.

The cake is a traditional Italian Cream, but I mixed pecans AND walnuts in the cake and cream cheese icing. I put the cream cheese icing in between the three layers and then crumb coated with a homemade white crusting buttercream (BC). Then I cut a wedge of a 6 inch butter cake and attached and covered with the same white buttercream to make the "stadium" and let it crust/dry.

I covered the sides of the main cake with the cream cheese icing and then marked off the "field" on top by outlining/piping the white BC along with the "yard lines". Coconut was lightly tinted with McCormick yellow for the end zone and green and placed inside the piped lines for the field. A goal post was fashioned with floral wire and dotted with royal blue icing then left to dry before inserting. (stick the uncoated bottom in styrofoam to dry) The remaining top was iced with the cream cheese and smoothed.

One more light layer of BC was added to the "seating" area and sprinkles were added for the "people". A small royal blue buttercream shell was piped around the stadium using Wilton's Royal Blue and black...a lot I might add. The top of the stadium was a good place to write "Happy Birthday" with yellow BC.

To finish the cake two markers were made from card stock and a "62" written with gold pen, attached with royal icing to a toothpick and inserted on the 62 yard line. I filled a new piping bag with the remainder of the royal blue BC on one side and the yellow BC on the other and used a medium shell tip to pipe the variegated shells around the bottom of the cake.

One last note: the yard marker dots were made with flattened royal icing dots made from a number 2 Wilton tip and flatted to dry before using a fine tip food marker to write the yard line numbers. They were attached to the "field" with small dots of royal icing.

He really seemed to enjoy his "Guy" cake!