Portfolio: Hook 'em Horns Birthday Cake

Football is a major religion here in the lone star state and my family practices it religiously every year with the onset of college football season! Our team of choice is none other than the Texas Longhorns and to celebrate the kickoff weekend, I was asked by a coworker to make a cake for one of her friend's birthdays.

The eyes of Texas are upon thee little cake... (and yes, that is my Longhorn shirt in the background!)

This cake was relatively easy to make, just a 9" round two layer cake which I coated with burnt orange french buttercream and then topped with white fondant. The only trouble I had was with the ropes on the side. SatinIce fondant tends to dry out really quickly unfortunately, so I had to remake these ropes THREE times. It also helps to have the cake right next to the work area when you're ready to move the ropes. A tip if you plan on trying ropes with fondant: use a fabric potholder to roll on top of. I discovered that the fabric has enough traction to keep the ropes rolling as opposed to sliding across the workspace (cornstarch was not helpful enough!)

I bought an official licensed UT cookie cutter to cut out the longhorn on top and used fondant gel colors mixed with a little vodka to paint the brown polka dots on the side and a small round cutter to do the orange dots. I need to find a smaller longhorn cutter so that I can actually do longhorns on the side of the cake, which was the original plan, but because I baked two layers instead of three, the cutter I had was too big. Oh well! The birthday girl loved it and my coworker was really impressed.

And of course, my Horns won that weekend...HOOK 'EM!!!

Happy Baking,
Kelly

PS. Some of y'all may be questioning my allegiance to the Horns when I in fact did not attend school there. The majority of my family has attended (including my husband albeit shortly), but the St. Edward's University Hilltoppers has not had a football team in about 50 years, so we adopt our team of choice instead. This also explains why some SEU alumni have T-shirts proclaiming a 50 year undefeated football streak. Happy football season!