Pickleball Cake made with bright yellow cream cheese frosting and cut-outs with gray in the base to resemble a pickleball

Easy Pickleball Cake

Pickleball Cake made with bright yellow cream cheese frosting and cut-outs with gray in the base to resemble a pickleball

Need a pickleball cake for a birthday?
(or pickleball tournament or whatever? 😉 )

If you’re not looking for anything too big or elaborate, I've got you covered!

The Backstory:

Having been recently introduced to the game of pickleball, I got curious when I saw looking at the shape / design of the ball. I’ve made a golf ball, baseball, and football cake...could I do a pickleball? I’d been looking around for cake ideas – and in all my poking around online, I never saw one that actually *looked* like a pickleball. Which honestly, is fair – the holes in the ball make it a bit tricky to pull off convincingly.

Even though I couldn’t find the faintest blueprint to follow online, I had an idea. Could some gray frosting in the base of a shallow hole create the illusion of an actual hole?

I decided to give this one a go – and while it doesn’t look perfect (go figure), I thought it turned out pretty good!

Soo I post the recipe (along with a short assembly video) in hopes it’ll be helpful to someone else. If that’s you, I’m glad you found this recipe - and I hope this is helpful!

Design hang-ups I had to work out- 

Frosting color.

What the heck color are most pickleballs?? I thought that would be a question with a really straightforward answer. But Google didn’t seem to have a straight answer as I went down the rabbit hole trying to answer that question. Some are yellow, some are neon yellow, some are orange, some are more of a neon green. And which one to use seems to vary with whether they’re for casual or tournament play and whether the court is indoors or outdoors.

Fortunately, frosting color is pretty easy to change up with the gel color you choose. I went with 3 drops of lemon yellow and 1 drop of electric green (think neon green) gel color and ended up with a color that matched the most common color I found online.

Buttercream with some added cream cheese is my go-to frosting, and it colors and smooths well. So that's what I went with! 

The dang ‘holes’ in the ball.

My other worry was the actual design of the frosting! Pickleballs are full of holes, and making the cake actually look that way I anticipated to be a challenge.

Well, holes make shadows, and shadows are gray. So I opted for a layer of gray frosting, stuffed it into the freezer for 10 minutes, and then added a layer of bright yellow frosting. Then I took the back end of a piping tip – and with a twisting motion – took a ‘cookie cutter’ cut out of the outer frosting at regular intervals around the cake. This let the gray underneath show through.

Weird technique? Yup.

Did the ‘cut-outs’ occasionally not work? Yup. (Fortunately, an easy fix with a small palette knife or toothpick.)

Did said technique work surprisingly well – and actually give the effect I was after? Also yes! 😉

One quick note on Cake shape.

I’ve only done a small handful of half-sphere cakes. To date I’ve not been brave enough to attempt a full sphere cake. My biggest struggle with my half-sphere pan though, is getting the center baked before the edges dry out.

My saving grace getting half-sphere cakes (or really any cake in a large pan) baked is a flower nail (or a flower pin). I put the nail flat-side-down inside the cake pan, and pour the batter in on top. The metal helps conduct heat from the oven to the batter in the center of the cake, helping it bake more evenly. Then the nail lifts out easily once you flip the cake over to take it out of the pan!

One last note – don’t over-fill the pan; it can overflow all over your oven. Ask me how I know, lol. HUGE mess. (Hint: keep the batter level a good centimeter below the edge of the pan!)

Result -

For someone who knows only the bare basics of Pickleball, I was actually really happy with how the cake came out! Picture above, and the video’s at the end of the recipe card.

If you’re looking to make a pickleball cake, tips are above and the recipe’s below – happy baking! If you try out the recipe let me know what you think! 

(Disclosure: As an Amazon associate I may earn from qualifying purchases, and my posts often contain affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you!) 

FAQS:

"I'm having trouble with the little cut-outs in the ball - tips?" 

-A few! Putting this section in bullet points for clarity.

-First - I just need to emphasize - make sure you ROTATE the piping tip out of the frosting. You can actually see this in the video – the first time I tried pulling it straight out most of the yellow stuck and stayed behind. Rotating got it the rest of the way out – most of the time. 

-Second! I rarely have an easy time working with plastic-anything with this frosting, so I definitely recommend a metal piping tip. WHY it makes a difference I haven’t the foggiest idea, but it made a world of difference in the golf ball cake I made with the exact same frosting.

- Next – as an added plus – a metal piping tip will retain heat better than a plastic one. If you’re having trouble with the cut-outs, try running the piping tip under hot water before making the cut-out if it’s really giving you grief.

- One last hail-Mary idea – if doing the cut-outs with a piping tip is really giving you grief, one other idea would be to try a small metal measuring spoon instead to ‘scoop’ out the cut-outs instead of punching them out. I’ve not personally tried it but I’ve seen other cake-makers do it in other cake designs.

Cake mix option -

So obviously nothing beats a scratch cake for taste. But sometimes – like lately when I’m baking with my 1- and 3-year-old kids underfoot – sometimes I need to simplify as much as I can. I’ve doctored up cake mixes by replacing oil with butter, water with buttermilk, and adding a bit of extra vanilla and sometimes a splash of liqueur like spiced rum or flavored schnapps. Options if you’re looking to save some steps, time, and clean-up!

"Help me out; what am I actually supposed to do with the flower nail?" ( / flower pin?) 
  • So - concepts first. The whole point of the flower nail is to conduct heat from the oven into the center of the cake batter. Cakes this thick can be difficult to bake all the way through without over-baking the edges. So you put the flower nail flat-side-down into the base of the pan, and then pour the batter in. I sprayed the pan and the nail together with baker's floured spray once the nail was in the pan. 

Here's where a picture's really worth a thousand words - photo below! 

 

Flower nail cake pan - shows how to use a flower nail to help the cake bake evenly

Don't forget to pin this recipe for later! 

Pickleball cake - image 2

Easy Pickleball Cake

Looking to make a Pickleball cake? Here's the recipe and all the tips I picked up making this fun easy pickleball cake! Happy baking!
Prep Time45 minutes
Cook Time40 minutes
Decorating time1 hour
Total Time2 hours 25 minutes
Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Easy pickleball cake, Easy vanilla half sphere cake, Pickleball cake
Servings: 1 6-inch cake
Calories: 516kcal
Author: Sarah H

Equipment

  • Baker's floured cooking spray (optional) (optional but recommended)
  • large flower nail (optional but highly recommended; helps the cake bake evenly)
  • Cake turntable (optional, but makes smoothing the frosting much easier)
  • small piping tip (you’ll be using the back end to make the cut-outs in the frosting so the front end doesn’t matter too much – but you DO want one that will be easy-ish to clean out. I also recommend a metal rather than a plastic tip.)
  • Small acetate sheet (or small flexible piece of plastic; to smooth frosting. A folded piece of parchment or wax paper works, but will tend to leave lines in the frosting.)

Ingredients

Cake

  • 1 ½ cups cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup unsalted butter or 1 stick room temperature
  • 3 eggs
  • ¾ cup buttermilk room temperature
  • 1 teaspoons clear vanilla extract

Frosting

Instructions

Cake

  • Preheat oven to 350°F (177℃). Prepare a 6-inch half sphere pan with baker's floured cooking spray (or grease and flour pan well). Place flower nail in the base of cake pan.
  • Mix together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt) in a mixing or stand mixer bowl until combined. Mix chunks of room-temperature butter slowly into the dry mix, on a low speed. Continue to mix until no large chunks of butter remain, and the mixture becomes crumbly.
  • Pour in eggs and mix on low until just incorporated.  Mix in the buttermilk and vanilla extract in two installments, on a low speed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula, then beat on medium speed for about 30 seconds.
  • Pour batter into prepared pan (I didn't quite use all of the batter; an overfilled sphere pan can overflow and make a mess in your oven). Batter level should be about a centimeter (not quite half an inch) below the cake pan rim. (Might not hurt to place a baking sheet in the oven below the pan just in case.)
  • Bake for 35-45 minutes, (or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean). Allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing cake from pan and removing the flower nail.
  • Cool to room temperature before decorating. (Place in the fridge to accelerate the cooling process if desired.) While you’re waiting…make your frosting!

Frosting

  • Beat together cream cheese and butter; beat in powdered sugar and vanilla until well combined.
  • Add milk if needed until frosting reaches an easily spreadable consistency. Divide frosting in half – color one half gray (with a small amount of black gel color) and the other half yellow / yellow-green.

Assembly & Decorating

  • (If desired, use a cake leveler or large serrated knife to slice cake into 2 or 3 layers to fill with frosting. I didn’t bother with that step this time around).
  • Place a smear of frosting on a plate or cake circle (to keep the cake from sliding while you decorate it) and center cake on the circle. Spread a layer of gray frosting over the cake and smooth with an offset spatula and acetate. (You’ll need to be able to punch into this layer to make the ‘holes’ in the top frosting layer, so I put it on fairly thick – thicker than a crumb coat.) Freeze for 10 minutes.
  • Add a yellow layer of frosting over the gray frosting and smooth with an offset spatula and acetate.
  • (This will be the most time-consuming step-) Make the pickleball cut-outs! With the back of a small piping tip, press and rotate the tip through the green frosting layer into the gray one. (Don’t go all the way through the gray one.) As you rotate the tip back out, it should pull the green frosting away, leaving a gray base to the cut-out.
  • Wipe the frosting out of the tip, and repeat! If you're having any trouble at this step - first, make sure you twist/rotate the tip out of the frosting. Pulling it straight out will usually just leave the frosting in the base of the cut-out. Next, I found a metal piping tip worked better than a plastic one. You can try heating it or wetting it if just the oil isn't working well enough. Chilling the cake may also help.
  • (More details in the post intro if you're having trouble - and please leave a comment or shoot me an email if you’re still having trouble.)
  • Transfer green frosting to a piping bag fitted with a grass tip, and pipe a rim of grass around the cake base. High-five yourself on your awesome cake - and enjoy!

Video

Nutrition

Serving: 1cake | Calories: 516kcal | Carbohydrates: 71g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 24g

Did you make this Pickleball cake? 

Send me an email and let me know how it went – please let me know if you had any issues! Or make my day and find me on Pinterest or on Instagram and tag @IntensiveCakeUnit in your photo!

If you loved the recipe, please help other people find it! Add a comment or a recipe rating at the bottom of the page! 🙂

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