Dream Football Cake

With football season in swing, or winding down really, I thought I better post this cake/brownies I made for my son’s football team before it ends.

It looks harder than it was.

It was simple, really.

What it was was just time consuming…but I had a relaxing Sunday to bake and decorate it— as our pep rally was on Monday evening.

So, I just took a nice relaxing day to bake and decorate.

My son’s team just had a big win the week before against Sky Ridge so I recreated the winning tie breaker touchdown using chocolate mint brownies and SourPatch Kids.

The players really liked it and the coaches said it was awesome!

It may look like it, but this “Dream Football Cake” as my husband called it was not complicated.

While they really are chocolate mint brownies, my husband kept calling it a Dream Football Cake. A few others at the pep rally referred to it as a birthday cake, so I titled it this.

I made two 1/2 sheet cookie pans of brownie mix. I lined the base and sides of the pan with parchment paper for baking. This is not a step to miss! Even using butter or grease will not be as effective as using the parchment baking paper. The paper will ensure that the brownie comes out in one piece.

First, I mixed up a full Costco box of Ghiridelli brownie mix which is 6 brownie packs into one bowl. Then, for extra chocolate, I poured in one mini chocolate chip semi sweet morsel 20 oz pack.

Then I weighed the total minus the bowl (make sure to weigh the bowl beforehand and jot it down) and divided it by two.

Each pan ended up with 3097 total.

I baked them at 325ºF for about 50 minutes until the edges were getting crisp but not burnt. I took them out to completely cool while we went to church.

When I got back from church, the brownies were completely cool.

I wrapped a Pineapple box I got at Sam’s Club in tin foil because it was a high riser type of box and I wanted a good base to work. I did not want to have to lean over while decorating it.

I used a math app to configure it to scale. I.E. I said the box is this length, how much should the width be for a high school football field.

Then I flipped the brownies out onto the tin foil covered box and using a dull edge or a kid knife so you do not cut the tin foil, measure and cut to size.

Next, I used cardboard straws to make the goal posts. I did get inspiration from this blogger fyi.

I’ll link here to her original idea.

I mixed up a batch of my Best Buttercream frosting and instead of vanilla bean paste and vanilla I subbed in about 1 TBSP mint flavoring. I’d recommend starting with 3 tsp and then doing a taste test and adding to taste.

I took out about 1/2 Cup of white frosting and 1/4 C for grey frosting, then added green gel food coloring to the rest to make the field.

I softened the frosting ever so slightly by warming it for about 10 seconds in the microwave because I did not do a crumb coat. The brownies were tough enough and cool enough to handle just one frosting layer without a crumb coat.

Next, I piped on the lines of the football field and the numbers as well as the logo of the kids High school and their mascot the Knights in the end zones. I was not exact here as there was not a lot of room. So I just did the 50 yard line and kept it a little more vague so the focus was on the winning play.

I sprayed a little edible gold dust over the Knights logo.

Then, using 6 Nutty Buddy Bars per stand (12 total) and frosting with grey colored frosting, I built up stands and stuck in Sour patch kids with toothpicks. I found the taller stand I could use the entire toothpick, the shorter stands I needed to cut the toothpicks down.

Finally, on to the players. This bit required candy melt chocoloate. Because the teams were orange and white and our players always use their black helmets I did orange SourPatch Kids and I ordered a special red, white and blue SourPatch bag for our white players. I used edible markers to mark the numbers on each SourPatch kid (guessing numbers for the other team) and then put each one on a toothpick.

I dipped each player into edible chocolate or vanilla bark and used another toothpick to shape helmets onto the SourPatch kids.

Then I sprayed the helmets with edible glitter as our kids’ helmets have gold sheen to them.

I stuck them into the cake with our QB who scored the winning touchdown in the endzone and used a toothpick to make a small football out of candy melt on him to represent the football.

I had the team and coaches running onto the field to celebrate.

The other team had sour faces on (haha pun intended).

It was a glorious win because we got cheated a few times this season with the most bizarre reffing calls (a dessert coming on this theme).

I had the referees out there and using the edible pen, I drew on their uniforms.

Anyway, if you have a few cookie sheets and some of the following supplies plus about 8 hours you can make this as well!

A few parents contributed some cash to the pep rally and I picked up BigDaddy’s Pizza which are giant for a wow factor on the table. I got bread sticks and dipping sauce as well.