Scott and I are both life-long Cardinals fans, met at a Cardinals game, and got engaged at Busch. So of course we had a Cardinals-themed wedding with a magnificent four tier baseball cake! I made the cake and stand, which was definitely stressful but rewarding in the end because the final result was epic!
In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea for me to make my own wedding cake, but I love making cakes and wasn’t sure if I could find someone in the area that could pull this off. Plus, I knew exactly what I wanted, and was able to bake the cake and build the frame several weeks in advance.
The Cake Stand
I decided on a four tier cake for dramatic effect, and because this worked out best with the lengths of standard mini bats. I cut four mini Cardinals baseball bats into three equal pieces. Using thin board, I made round circles and put a thin blue ribbon border around the edges. I then screwed the bats into the rounds. To ensure the bats didn’t sink into the cake, I put 8″ plastic separator plates underneath the fondant on the bottom three tiers and plenty of dowel rods inside the cake. We had to be careful to not hit the plate when we cut the cake, and my sisters helped with the disassembly to remove the plate before serving. I was really nervous about it toppling, but I guess my engineering skills passed the test 🙂
The Cake Design
I did some cake baking trials and finally decided on a white chocolate cake with strawberry filling covered with white chocolate fondant. This fondant or modeling chocolate tastes amazing and is the easiest and only recipe I use to-date for fondant. I added a simple red ribbon with white stitches on the edges to border each cake. I then added red baseball stitches across each round cake.
The Topper
The finishing touch was our Cardinals topper! We ordered this from Jayne Williams Wedding Cake Tops for $50. We were able to customize the team and a lot of other features like the bride and groom hair and skin colors.
The Cake Table
I happened to have a glass table the exact size of the table at the reception site so I put pictures and baseball cards under the glass. This made for a really neat display around the cake. We also had red and white punch flowing in the fountains in the backdrop which gave a very magical effect.
Cutting the Cake
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