World Cup football cake

Posted on Jul 6th 2010

England's World Cup dream ended when we went crashing out against the Germans in unspectacular but controversial style. Cue many men (and women, but mostly men) hanging up their England shirts, vuvuzelas (thank god), and moping about.

It's very easy to tell people to take pleasure in simple things but reminding them that "it's only a game" and that outside "the weather is glorious" may only last so long.

Why not embrace your inner Stepford Wife, disappear into the kitchen and "whip up" a little surprise to put a smile back on the faces of your disappointed boys?

This World Cup cake may not make it all better, it may not magically allow that second goal but it will take less than 90 minutes to bake and assemble, and may make all the difference.

Method:

1. Start with 24 cupcakes and one batch of icing. You can either buy ready made royal icing or make it yourself.

Wrap a 10- by 14-inch piece of corrugated cardboard with cake foil. Tape edges to under side of cardboard to secure in place. If you don't have cake foil, tin foil baking paper will also do the trick.

Arrange 15 fairy cakes (3 rows by 5 rows) in a rectangular shape on your board. Dab a small amount of icing on the bottom of each cupcake and lightly press into place on the board. This will keep your fairy cakes from sliding. You will have 9 cupcakes leftover.

Tip: A simple sheet cake can be used for the field instead of cupcakes - the decorating instructions remain the same.

2. Using a piping bag, pipe a green border around the edge of your cake, then work your way in, moving the bag back and forth and filling in the middle until the top of the cake is completely covered.

If you do not have a piping bag, then you can cut the corner off of a freezer bag and use that (just a small cut!).

3. With a metal spatula, smooth out the icing until flat.

Tip: By lightly wetting your spatula while smoothing out the icing, it will make it easier to flatten out. You will have to wet the spatula more than once throughout the process, but be sure to avoid getting it too wet (this can cause the colour to run out..)

4. Place your white icing into a plastic freezer bag fitted with a cake tip and pipe the lines onto the top of your field. If this is too much effort then you can buy icing pens from most supermarkets.

Tip: For ease, you can draw out your field lines first with a toothpick, then trace over the toothpick lines with the white icing.

5. Take one of the cakes that you set aside earlier and completely cover the top with with white icing. This will be your central football and the crowning glory of your cake.

6. Most supermarkets have huge selections of cake decorating kits where you can buy coloured icing pens and loads of lovely edible decorations. You could stick a bit of licorice in the centre of your ball or fashion a pentegon shape out of dark icing.

7. From each point of the pentagon, draw a straight line out to the edge of the cake.

Tip: black licorice also makes nice straight lines for your football.

8. Where each line meets the edge of the cupcake, ice in a triangle shape (as seen in photo). This is your beautiful executed football.

9. Place the football cupcake in the center of your field and with the rest of the icing, decorate the remaining cupcakes. You could design them with more footballs, England football shirts, your favourite WAG, Fabio Capello....Your options are endless!

10. This is optional, but a really nice little touch. Raid the kids toybox for football players (if only life was that easy eh?) or alternatively look on Amazon or Ebay for lovely old fashioned subbuteo figures.

You could recreate your favourite moment from the match - if you can pick your brains and remember one.

AOL has got all angles of the World Cup covered this year -- not just the footy. For world cup recipes, WAG video diaries, funny videos and gossip, check out our Alternative World Cup Hub, and follow us on Twitter for updates!