I baked the large ball pan cakes last night. I've never used them to make a full ball before... can anyone offer any pointers or advice?

Do I need supports? I'm worried if I put the ball together and ice it, it will collapse. Do they stay together with no problem? (I used my vanilla recipe. Does this make a difference? )

It's going to be on a 10" square base. I have no idea how to attach a ball to another cake.

Thank you.

I just made a soccer ball cake but wanted it more lifesize than the Wilton 3D ball pan (I think that's the pan you are using). I used the 1/2 ball pan from Wilton (so it was pretty big) and put two together to make the 3D ball. I had to trim some of the cake away to make it a perfect circle. Even with all that, it was no problem keeping the ball together. I justed used 1/2" of icing and then crumb coated it. I then used a dowel to keep it together and attach it to the 10" round cake it was sitting on (and I used a bit of icing between the ball cake and the 10" round cake). I made it with Silvia Weinstock's vanilla recipe. The picture of the soccer cake is in my photos. Good luck!

I used the ball pan to do the heads of my 2 bear cakes. Both stayed together very nicely. In my case I did put a dowel down the entire center of the cake.

PinkLisa - Your soccer ball is incredible! How did you apply the pattern so uniformly? Mine usually starts out looking good, then turns into a Picasso-like monstrosity toward the end!

DianeLM -- I also had problems at the bottom with the pieces being too large. I cut them to make them fit. In the future, I would resize the hexagons and pentagons smaller so they fit uniformly from top to bottom. I think I would measure the ball and try to figure out then how big the shapes should be (the math would probably be a bit complicated to figure that out). I was also challenged given I didn't start with a perfect circle since I carved the sides (it looked like a nice round ball but I just eye-balled it).

Thanks for the info, PinkLisa. Ya know, soccer balls don't even look like that any more! The new designs are even more complicated. I don't think those ball designers took us cake decorators into consideration. How rude!!