Ambitious 30th birthday cake

What comes to making cakes, I might be slightly mad. Or at least very ambitious. When I was asked to make a 30th birthday cake for a person who loves travelling, New York and basketball, the first thing that came to my mind was that I could try out my new ball shaped cake tin - and not the easier way possible.

Cake baking these days requires
different kinds of tools ;)

The design

I have to admit that this design caused me a few badly slept nights when I thought about the structural strength of this cake, but I never wanted to give up on it. Perhaps I've been inspired by Ace of Cakes' motto "Make it bigger, make it badder, make it awesome", but from the very beginning I wanted to make a ball, as difficult as it may sound.

The cake was for a rather large number of people, so I added a normal round cake with a city skyline silhouette under the ball. Because this was going to be quite a tall cake and with a gravity defying ball on top, the cake needed a support dowel inside.

Finished base with LED lights
and a support rod

Then I had a stroke of genius. 


Because the cake would need a base with a support rod, it would have to be self-(read: dad-) made. And because the base needed to be self-made, it was possible to add lighting. I decided to use the technique from my last Angry Birds cake and have the city skyline separate from the cake with the base's LED lights between the silhouette and the actual cake.

My mun had some (now old ;) ) Christmas lights which fit my plan like a glove.

Then it only required a few ready cut pieces of MDF from a local retailer, some glue, nails, paint and a piece of plexiglass (and my dad's input on work) and the base was finished!

All it took after that was a few sleepless nights, countless number of work hours and a touch of good luck to get the cake finished.

City skyline silhouette drying