Trinity Gaels Cake

My (not so little) brother’s birthday was last weekend, and since he has been a avid supporter of my baking over the last couple of years, (he’ll try anything and has given me a number of baking books) it was only right that he finally got one that was just for him. When he is not appreciating my baking, he is playing football or hurling, and has been a member of Trinity Gaels Club since he was about 6. My memories of Graham growing up always have him wearing his Trinity Gaels kit and the blonde floppy hairdo from the 90′s. He’s grown up/gotten old since then! When it came to designing a cake that suited him best, it just had to be his club crest. As club crests go it is not that complicated. I decided to make the crest seperately and then attach to the cake.

First thing to do it find a decent picture of the crest to print out and trace it onto baking parchment. You will need fondant in white, black and red for this one.

Rolling out the white fondant I lay the traced out crest on top and traced around the outline with a blunt sugarcraft modelling tool. Lift the backing parchment and you will have the indent on the fondant ready to be cut out with the tip of a sharp knife. This step was repeated on the white fondant to cut out the hurleys.

For the football, I traced out the outline and also the lines on the ball itself. I cut out the outline of the ball and used a black icing pen to complete the detail. This was by far the trickiest part of the process.

Rolling out the black fondant, I traced out the background and cut as before. The red fondant was traced over for the stripes to ensure they were the correct length and width and cut out as before.

Once you have all the separate components cut out, all that is needed is to assemble the pieces.

Lay the large white background on a flat surface dusted with icing sugar (to ensure it doesn’t stick). Using edible glue paint the back of the black background piece and place as per the design pattern. Next glue on the football and the red stripes.

Lastly lie the hurleys across the red stripes and using the tip of your sharp knife, follow the line around them so as to cut through only the layer of red stripes. Lift the hurleys off and remove the pieces of the red fondant where the hurleys lay. These should lift easily once they are cut through fully. Once all the pieces are removed, paint the back of the hurleys with edible glue and place on the crest. They should now sit flush with the red stripes.

Roll out some more black fondant and using regular alphabet cutters, cut out the team name. Place these at the top of the crest using edible glue.

Once the glue has set, use a damp piece of kitchen paper to gently wipe the crest so as to remove any icing sugar or stray pieces of fondant. This is good to do especially when using black which doesn’t hide the white icing sugar well.

Once done, leave aside whilst you make your cake. Any round cake will do just ensure that its wide enough to fit the crest. I went with a vanilla cake with chocolate fudge icing for the centre.

Once cooled and assembled coat the cake in warm jam and cover with white fondant. Paint the top of the cake with glue and place your crest in the centre.

All you need then are some birthday candles and a good old-fashioned tea party!