Yankee Hat Cake

My friend saw a baseball hat cake somewhere on the internet and realized it would be the perfect cake for his son’s 7th birthday.  His son loves the Yankees and would definitely go crazy over a Yankee hat cake.  So I was called for the job.  I made a baseball hat cake once before and it came out pretty good but not great.  I can’t even find any pictures from my first attempt, but that’s perfectly fine; there were a lot of issues.  The first hat cake was practice cake and this time, I worked out all of the kinks!

The first thing I did was mix up some navy blue fondant.  To get this color I used Americolor gel paste in royal blue, violet, and black.  Then I formed the brim.  To make the brim I used a real baseball hat and traced the brim onto some parchment paper. Then I cut out my stencil and cut the shape out of my royal blue fondant.  Before allowing it to dry I imprinted the brim with the seam marks using a fondant quilting tool. Then I placed the fondant on the parchment and then on the real hat to dry in a nice curved shape.  I allowed the brim to dry out for a few days.  When I was ready to assemble the hat I baked 3 cakes: an 8″ a 7″ and a 6″ layer.  This gave me the nice rounded shape to make it easier to carve. I carved out some dents to make the hat look worn.  Once the hat was covered with fondant, I made more stitch marks and used the tips of 2 different sized round piping tips for the eyelet holes.  I used a small piece of matching fondant formed into a flat round disc to form the fabric-covered button and attached that with a tiny bit of water.

I cut the Yankee logo out of white fondant and attached it to the front of the hat.  A number 7 was added to the back of the hat because the birthday boy turned 7 years old! Once the brim was attached and the cake was placed on the pinstriped cake board, I brushed the whole hat with a little vodka to give it a real fabric look.

Happy Birthday Avi!