Basketball Cake

June 2014.

This cake was a lot of fun.  The black fondant is not store bought.  I made it!  Black is hard to achieve without the fondant ending up really sticky and goopy.  I will post a tutorial soon on how I did it.  

For the cake board I covered it in chocolate fondant then used a imprint mat and pressed.
The color didn't work the way I had hoped.  I diluted some brown food coloring in alcohol and brushed it on randomly to make a wood grain.  It didn't turn out how I envisioned so next time I will try something else I think.  For the ball I used a hemisphere pan.  You could also probably use a glass bowl to bake the cake in as well.
For the net, I used a clay extruder and pushed out a bunch of white ropes.  I found the middle of one rope and attached it to the top then did the same to a second.  I then went around and would twist two together and secure them to the cake with some tylose glue, add another rope at the top, twist the one next to it, attach, and repeat all the way around.  Some of the rope would stretch and break so it took a lot of patience.  I finally got going pretty fast and that helped the ropes not pull so much.