new beginnings, yet another project

Some of you know I work with the Young Women at Church. We get them excited about their "personal progress," and try to get them to set goals in different areas and work hard to be better people. It's super fun.

Our big event, at the beginning of the year is called "New Beginnings," and boy was this one fun! We had a basketball theme; we called it "Get Your Head in the Game." There was a program with spiritual thoughts (we called them "pep talks" and "game plans"), and the Young Women's Theme was our "Spirit Song," and we, the leaders, were "coaches," "cheerleaders," and "scouts." It all worked so well on the metaphorical level; I was super impressed.

Anyway, the fabulousness of the night really was up to everyone else. I was in charge of refreshments. I went to a SuperBowl party at the beginning of February and our host had a stadium cake pan from Williams Sonoma that one of the guests borrowed to make this awesome stadium cake. I knew at that party that I'd be in charge of refreshments for this basketball party, so I thought it would be super to make a basketball arena cake. It was exciting!!!

First of all, I followed the directions on the box religiously (my friend, the owner of the pan, saved the box the pan came in for its "stadium cake recipe). If you know me, I usually cook fairly free spirited, but for this, I was scared of messing it up. You can't use a box cake, since the cake needs to be a little more dense (think pound cake-like) on order to work with the pan. So, I did everything to the T, including get the eggs and butter to room temperature (why? I have no idea) and sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together (why? I have no idea).

I documented every step. My tools of the trade:


Here's the pan, upside down, covered in (fake store-brand) Crisco and flour:


Here's my batter in the very cool pan:


And, here it is, 40 minutes later, my "naked" cake (funny Twining family joke: Dad says "we'll eat the cake naked," meaning no frosting, then Brad says "you mean, the cake would be naked, right?"):


My plan was to replicate the cake from the SuperBowl party, which had little "fans" piped onto the stands with the mechanical pastry bag. The Young Women's theme has eight values which each have a corresponding color (for example, young women should aspire to have "divine nature," and its color is blue). The most time-consuming part of this entire process was getting these colors of frosting in and out of that mechanical pastry bag. I piped fans in the stands, as well as something else on the cake, in each color. Voila, eight colors. PLUS chocolate frosting for the lines on the basketball court, so nine colors total. (Editor's note: Don't be deceived. The frosting was Betty Crocker whipped white cream cheese frosting that I colored myself. Not homemade. I'm not that much of a chef.)

Also, haha, I had to use Google images and search for "basketball court" to make sure I was doing it right.

The final product:



Whoo hoo! How COOL is that?!?

Then, the finishing touch, was the basketball hoops. I made them with a chocolate bar, peppermints, and candy canes left over from Christmas. I made a teeny teeny amount of royal icing (from a gingerbread house recipe book), which meant I took the recipe and divided it by like 8, which was weird math. I'm sure I did it wrong, but the hoops stick together long enough to be eaten by someone so that's good news.


I was thrilled.

The night was really fun. The girls had a great time. Wandering Nana also blogged about it, so you can check out her summary, too.

I also made basketball cupcakes, in case the cake wouldn't feed everyone. I didn't expect, um 35 people there, so we definitely could have used more food. If we do it again, we'll get ice cream, too.


The program included a fun game where they were in two teams, with one team shooting as many baskets as they could while the other team did like a "scripture chase" with their Personal Progress books. They had clues and they all had to find the corresponding part in their books and put their fingers on it before the round was up. Cute game.


Each of the girls got a "trophy" as a take-home gift, which of course would motivate me if I was 14. I love that kind of stuff.


There you have it. My most recent culinary adventure and excitement with the Young Women at Church. I'm definitely having fun.