Rugby Birthday Cake

The boyfriend is a complete rugby junkie and I’ve lost count of how many teams he plays for! One huge achievement was that he went to New Zealand this year to take part in the Touch Rugby World Cup and represent South Africa. I’m a very proud girlfriend who, admittedly, has a very limited knowledge of rugby! At least I know about baking! So when it came to his birthday I made a rugby stadium cake, nothing like on Cake Boss, but it was still labeled the ‘best birthday cake ever’ by Stu. Take that Cake Boss!

I made a basic chocolate cake and used a square tin, I didn’t need a big cake for 5 people, all I did was cut some of the side off of the square to shape it into a rectangle.

Then used the standard supermarket food colouring in green, and just put a copious amount in the icing. I used cream cheese icing which was a tablespoon of butter, about 4 tablespoons of cream cheese and enough icing sugar to make the mixture a suitable consistency. I put aside some un-coloured icing for the white lines later on. I then took coconut in a separate bowl and dyed that with food colouring (about half a bottle) and stirred it around. The coconut was used to get the look of grass in the top of the cake and I just sprinkled it on after I had iced the whole thing.

The posts were made from white chocolate biscuit fingers I found in Spar and I stuck a toothpick to hold the middle and two posts together. The rugby ball was something I came across in Woolworths, it’s plastic but if you’re willing enough I’m sure you could make your own rugby props with plastic icing (such as Trumps White Roll Icing available at supermarkets).

The stadium lines I used a plastic sandwich bag and cut a very tiny bit of one of the corners, then put icing in. It’s like a make-shift icing bag that make a thin line.

That’s it! It was a complete experiment but it didn’t work out to badly at all! Sure you could improvise and make your own. When we were eating it someone commented on how ‘clever’ it was to use a chocolate cake because it looked like soil underneath the grass! I didn’t actually think of that?