Basketball and Lion Paw Graduation Cakes

Baking Date: June 13, 2014

Our family was invited to a graduation party for two high school seniors – Lana and Sydney. Our son Alex plays baseball and basketball with Lana’s younger brother, and we’ve known the family for more than 5 years.

The families were hosting the party at one of their homes. There was great food, games, and music playing on a gorgeous Saturday evening. It was a really nice party.

The girls have been playing basketball together for years. Their high school team had made it to the semi-final game in the state tournament this year. I had made a cake for Lana to celebrate that feat.

There was a fabulous cake for the girls. But I never arrive at a party empty-handed, so I made a couple of special cakes to help celebrate Lana and Sydney’s basketball careers and the high school mascot, a Lion.

First was the similar basketball cake I had made Lana earlier. This time, I made it using a white cake mix. I separated out the batter into one half, one quarter, and one quarter. I colored one quarter royal blue, and one quarter golden yellow, which are the high school colors.  I then poured in the white cake batter and added the royal blue and golden yellow batter, swirling it around. This is what it looked like going into the oven:

Cake batter getting ready to head into the oven

Once the cake had cooled, I iced it using chocolate frosting, I then covered it with orange and black M&Ms to make the basketball. My husband said I should have used gold and blue M&Ms in the school colors — great idea for next time!

I also made candy melt lion paws in blue and gold. I used these as decoration around the cake. So here’s the final product:

Cake with the M&Ms

Cake with the lion paw candy melts added on

At the party, the M&M cake was a big hit with the kids. It was gone pretty quick. I found someone who got a piece and asked if I could get a picture of the inside. Here’s how the swirling turned out:

Blue/gold/white swirls

The second cake was in the shape of a paw, using a special pan. I made a chocolate cake and decorated it with vanilla frosting as the base. The paw pads were decorated using a #17 tip with white icing dyed royal blue and golden yellow, with golden yellow icing trim around the base of the cake.

I made a candy melt basketball, with black sparkle gel frosting as the seams. I placed this on the center of the cake:

I used the remaining blue/gold candy melt paws around as additional decoration:

Lion paw cake – view from the front

Lion paw cake – view from the top

Sydney’s mom and her younger sister Riley came up to me at the party and asked if the basketball was edible. When I said yes, Riley got the biggest smile on her face and ran to get it.

Congrats Lana and Sydney!