Easy Sports Cake for Birthday Celebrations

Got kids who love sports? This Sports Cake is easy to do and makes a perfect birthday cake for boys big and small!

My middle son and my husband share a birthday, so each year I try to come up with a cake theme that would suit them both. This year, I decided to go with a sports theme that covers a few different sports that my son and husband like to play together.

Whether it’s tossing the football or baseball around to each other at the beach, going to my son’s weekly soccer games or challenging each other on the basketball court, it’s clear these two bond over being active together and this sports cake seemed like a good fit!

Easy Sports Cake

You’ll Need

One 9×13 cake, any flavour
Buttercream icing
Brown food colouring
Green food colouring
Orange food colouring
Red food colouring
Black food colouring (or purchased black icing)
Piping Bags
Writing tip
Star piping tip
Wilton No.233 Decorating Tip, Multi-Opening
Alphabet Letter Mold (optional)
Candy melts (optional)

Directions

This sports cake requires quite a bit of icing, you’ll likely need to double batch your recipe. Give the full cake a nice light crumb coating to start, I just used plain white icing for the crumb coat,  you could use green if wanted as well.

Mark out the areas where you will have the balls situation. You can freehand this  or use different sized bowls/drinking glass, whatever you have handy with a thin edge that’s round and gently press it into the crumb coat leaving you a guide on where these ball will be. 

Start with the white baseball, covering the area using the star tip with white icing. Tint a small amount of icing red. Using a piping bag and writing tip, add on the stitch lines. 

For the soccer ball, start with the black section. I found it much easier to just buy a small tube of black icing, if you are tinting with food colouring I recommend a wilton black gel food colouring for best results. Start with middle pentagon, outlining first and then filling in the middle. Next draw lines out from each angle and start to create the next pentagons. You will only see part of the outer ones. Also outline the full ball. Fill in the remainder with white icing using the star tip. 

Tint a portion of icing brown, again I like the Wilton brown gel food colouring. Using the star tip fill in the football shape. For the football markings, use white icing and whatever tips you have handy. If you only have a thin tip for writing you can draw the wide lines and fill them in, I found a wide tip in stash that I used. I used a writing tip and went over the area a few times for the lacing. 

Tint a portion of the icing orange for the basketball, and like the others, fill the full area in using a star tip. Use the brown icing and a writing tip to draw on the lines of the basketball. If you want you can outline the basketball with either black or orange icing. 

Now the only left to fill in is the grass. Tint the remainder of your icing green and use the multi opening tip (grass/hair tip) to fill in the rest of the cake surface. I had some leftover icing and decided to pipe on a fancy border at the bottom edge. 

You can add the Happy Birthday message on with buttercream icing or candy letters if you choose. I bought an Alphabet Candy Mold from the Bulk Barn when I was out picking up supplies because it was on clearance and I thought it would be fun to give it a try so for this cake that is what I used. I have terrible handwriting and I liked that I would be able to use the mold over and over again for other uses. I also used it for this Fishing Cake I made for his brother just a few days earlier. 

To use the mold, place candy melts in a small microwavable dish, one colour to each bowl, and microwave for about 30 seconds. Stir and microwave for another 20-30 seconds until you reach a smooth texture. Spoon the melted candy melts into the molds on the letters you will need. I alternated with Yellow, Purple, Orange and Blue. Place the mold in the fridge to harden. You’ll have to repeat the process for the letters you need double of.

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If you prefer cupcakes, check out these Sports Cupcakes:

Soccer Cupcakes

Football Cupcakes

Basketball Cupcakes

Baseball Cupcakes

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