My nephew loves the San Francisco Giants and I would really like to make him a Giants baseball hat cake. Is there a special cake pan that is shaped like a 3-D baseball hat or do I have to sculpt the cake? What pans do you suggest I use? Thanks for your help!!

You could use half of the sports ball pan, and then make the bill of the hat with gumpaste. I've read that some bake cakes in pyrex bowls, for a bigger cake.

I made one using half a Wilton ball pan. It was the bowling ball from an old Wilton ball/pin set I had. Have seen a sports ball pan (soccer, basketball et.c) in craft stores that look about the same size. This hat was part of a larger cake, so like akgirl10 suggests, if the it is the whole cake, you may want to use a metal bowl.

For template, I used a real hat that was close to the size of the pan. Pressed the brim flat and drew the outline on parchment. Used that to cut the brim out of fondant and formed it to the pan. I had lots of time to let it dry. Once I covered the hat's crown with fondant, I just slit a bit at the sides to hold it. The brim was resting on the cake round so didn't need to hold itself up.

I'll see if I can attach pictures of just the brim - and a link to the finished cake. It was my first cake out of class, so LOTS of people have made better hat cakes, but hope this helps you.

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1175891

Pat.

I used a pan equivalent to half of the sports ball pan, and cut out the brim out of an 8 inch round cake pan. It wasn't until after I made this cake that I did courses and realized that I was making my icing much too thick! The picture is dark but the cake did turn out great!

The picture is here:
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1192015.html