
Football Cake
Make a fun football cake - complete with football, grass, and 10 through 50 yard lines! Makes enough to feed a large crowd! (24+ servings)
Servings: 24 servings
Calories: 718kcal
Equipment
- 1 10 inch cardboard cake circle (or an 8 inch circle; I just find 10" circles easier to work with!)
- 1 6 inch cardboard cake circle (I like Wilton's center-punched circles)
- Baker's floured cooking spray (optional, but I like to use this instead of parchment paper)
- Cake leveler (or serrated knife; optional)
- 2 small piping bags + tips (linked is a set that contains reusable bags and all the tips I used! You can also buy the small round tip, flat tip and grass piping tip individually)
- 5 Cake dowels or large plastic straws (to keep your top tier from sinking into the base tier!)
- Ruler (optional but helpful to center top tier)
Ingredients
Chocolate Cake layers
- 3 ½ cups all purpose flour (525g)
- 3 ½ cups caster sugar (675g)
- 1 ž cups cocoa powder (150g)
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda (7g)
- 1 teaspoon salt (5g)
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter (3 sticks/24 T/375g, softened)
- 6 large eggs at room temperature
- 2 Âź cups buttermilk (500mL; at room temperature)
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract (15mL)
Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting
- 16 ounces cream cheese (2 packages, softened)
- 1 1/2 cups butter (24 Tbsp or three sticks, softened)
- 10-11 cups powdered sugar
- 4-5 Tablespoons milk
- 2 Tablespoons clear vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon salt (if using unsalted butter)
- ž cup cocoa powder (for top tier; save and add later! You can add a bit of brown gel color for a darker color if desired)
- 3-4 drops green gel food color (for base tier; save and add later!)
Instructions
Football Cake layers
- Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F(180C) or 325 F(160C) for a convection oven. Grease 3 8-inch cake pans and 2 6-inch pans with baker's floured spray and/or line pans with parchment paper.
- Mix together dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt) in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle (or hand mixer or whisk) until well combined.
- Continuing to mix on low, add in bits of softened butter, mixing until no lumps of butter are visible and the mixture looks crumbly.
- Whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add to dry ingredients and mix until no dry ingredients are visible. Scrape down the bowl and beat for another 20 seconds.
- Fill the 3 / 2 pans evenly (I find a kitchen scale helpful for this part. I had about 550 grams in my 8-inch pans, and about 350 in my 6-inch pans.)Â
- Bake for 30-35 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow cake layers to cool for 10-15 minutes on a wire cooling rack before removing from pans, and cool completely before frosting. Set in the fridge or freezer to accelerate the cooling process if desired. (This is a great time to make your frosting!)
Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting
- Beat together softened cream cheese and butter; slowly add in powdered sugar alternating with milk until frosting reaches desired consistency. Add vanilla and salt and beat until well combined.
- Reserve about ½ cup of white frosting to use for decorating. Remove 1/3 of the remaining frosting and stir in cocoa powder â youâll use this for the top tier. Color the remaining frosting green.
Assembly
- Once your cakes are cool, level them (if needed; these cakes usually bake fairly flat). Place a smear of frosting on your large cake circle (to keep the cake from sliding while you decorate it) and center your first large cake layer in the center of the circle. Spread the layer with frosting, and center your next layer on top. Repeat the process with your remaining cake layers - I like to flip my top layer upside down to make smoothing the frosting easier.
- Next, repeat the same process with your smaller cardboard circle and cake layers. Of note â if your circles arenât pre-center-punched, be sure to grab a dowel or straw and make your own hole in the exact center of the circle. This will allow you to center the top tier on the base tier later on.
- Now you're ready to crumb-coat . If you're unfamiliar with crumb-coating, it's just what it sounds like â spreading a thin layer of frosting over the entire outside of the cake tiers to keep crumbs out of your final layer.
- Once your crumb coats have set (this takes about 5-10 minutes in the fridge), add your final layers of frosting and smooth. I like to use a large offset spatula and bench scraper for this part.
- For my larger tier, I was able to smooth the frosting fairly well free-handed, but I struggled getting the sides smoothed on my smaller one. Trimming the layers just smaller than the cake circle and using the cardboard as a guide for my bench scraper worked well for smoothing the frosting on the top tier! Once your cakes are covered, place them into the fridge or freezer to set the frosting.
Okaaaay. Stacking the tiers!
- âHow to Make a Tiered Cakeâ by Chelsweets is still my favorite video tutorial to date â sometimes seeing the process can be very helpful!
- It helps to grab a ruler for this part! To center a 6-inch cake on top of an 8-inch cake, I place the straws into the base tier just over one inch from the cake edge at quarter intervals around the cake. Place your last, tallest straw or dowel into the exact center of the cake, making sure to keep it straight up as you press down.
- Now youâre ready â center the hole in the bottom of your top tier cake circle over the tallest dowel and let the top tier gently down onto the base tier. The dowel will poke into the center of the top tier to hold it in place.
Decorating!
- I found that my cardboard cake circle showed more than I was happy with, so I piped a little extra frosting onto the base of the top tier to hide it!
- Use a flat frosting tip to pipe alternating lines 2/3 and 1/3 of the way up the sides of the base tier.
- Add the football pattern to the top tier (I did that first while I had the flat tip on!) Switch to the small round tip and pipe on the line marker numbers.
- I also used a grass piping tip to add green âgrassâ frosting to the edge of the base tier, but this is optional (and a little messy)!
- Step back, admire your cake, and find someone to give you a high-five! (Shoot me a DM on Instagram if you canât find anyone right away!) ;)
Video
Nutrition
Serving: 1slice (1/24th cake) | Calories: 718kcal | Carbohydrates: 103g | Protein: 8g | Fat: 38g
Did you make this Football Cake?
Let me know how it went - or find me on Pinterest or on Instagram and tag @IntensiveCakeUnit in your photo!
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