Hi everyone,

Over the weekend I made a cinderella's carriage out of a sports ball pan after lots of failed attempts it turned out ok I guess. I'm not a professional, I just dabble in cake decorating for myself and my family. This cake was for my neice's 6th birthday. I had a wedding to race off to, so I relied on my folks to get the cake out of the oven for me, and the centre sank when checking on it after 35 minutes, so I filled in the centre with frozen berries which melted inside the cake to make a nice moist surprise in the middle (I liked that idea so much that if I do a ball cake again, then I might even deliberately hollow out the very centre to add cream or mousse or berries etc again). I covered it with fondant, which worked surprisingly well (we don't use buttercream as much here in Australia) And moulded wheels out of melted white chocolate. My grandma had taught me cake decorating using a lot of fondant and piping in royal icing, but I enjoyed working with the chocolate so much, I think I might play around with piping in white chocolate on occasion in future, see how that goes.

So all in all, it turned out fairly OK. It was a rushed job (had to do it when I got home from a wedding, and also have a 12 week bub to look after, so you can imagine that time was an issue!) and not quite as nice as I'd hoped, but it did the job. The thing I would like to know for next time is how other people transport ball shaped cakes? I had sat the ball cake on a ring for stability on the board, but had to have my hands beside the cake the entire trip to the party (hubby drove obviously!) in order to stop it from rolling off the ring whenever he put the brakes on. Any ideas? Thankyou!

I did a carriage cake once and simply glued a little cardboard circle to a crystal-look bowl turned upside down. I had to carve a bit off the bottom "ball" to make it flat. This worked fine for me but I didn't transport it. If I was going to transport it, I would drill a hole in the bowl and dowel the entire cake into a cake drum.